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Phone-based ride hailing and scooter sharing did not exist before. These services are significantly better than previous alternatives. Legacy taxi services in

by kanox 6y ago

Phone-based ride hailing and scooter sharing did not exist before. These services are significantly better than previous alternatives. Legacy taxi services in particular are extremely shitty and widely hated because of scammers.

drdeca 6y ago
Has anyone here tried libretaxi? (An open-source phone-based ride hailing service, where payments are made directly to the driver) It sounds appealing to me, but I haven’t tried it, and I imagine that it could be lacking in the network effect department. Also, I am not sure if it has a reputation system like Uber and Lyft do. Edit: Suddenly unsure whether my comment here is sufficiently on-topic/relevant to fit with the community norms here. My apologies if it is not.
- Alekhine 6y ago
  Crap name as well. It's a shame that open source projects can't market their ideas to save their lives.
  - tanatocenose 6y ago
    You think it is worse based on what quality than the names uber or lyft? Uber has to be by every known metric one of the worst names for anything ever.
    - Alekhine 6y ago
      By what specific metrics is Uber a bad name? Uber is a short, catchy, two-syllable name. Libretaxi is a mouthful. The only good thing about it is that it's descriptive. It doesn't really stick in your mind like Uber does, or their branding. Disclaimer: I think marketing is a parasitic industry that gets way too much money for the value they provide. But marketing is important because it works.
Traster 6y ago
I'm not saying being able to hail a ride on an App isn't a good thing, I'm saying it's not a competitive advantage and it doesn't seem to significantly increase the profitability of the service. There was a time when you could have argued that Uber could raise the occupancy rates of the cabs - that doesn't seem to have worked out though, through a combination of smart algorithms and scale, that doesn't seem to have materialized. The scooters, again, I'm not sure are actually economically viable, and are also very clearly a regulatory issue - being banned by multiple cities and essentially working on a model of littering an entire city with cheap scooters.

by kanox 6y ago

drdeca 6y ago

Has anyone here tried libretaxi? (An open-source phone-based ride hailing service, where payments are made directly to the driver) It sounds appealing to me, but I haven’t tried it, and I imagine that it could be lacking in the network effect department. Also, I am not sure if it has a reputation system like Uber and Lyft do. Edit: Suddenly unsure whether my comment here is sufficiently on-topic/relevant to fit with the community norms here. My apologies if it is not.

Alekhine 6y ago
Crap name as well. It's a shame that open source projects can't market their ideas to save their lives.
- tanatocenose 6y ago
  You think it is worse based on what quality than the names uber or lyft? Uber has to be by every known metric one of the worst names for anything ever.
  - Alekhine 6y ago
    By what specific metrics is Uber a bad name? Uber is a short, catchy, two-syllable name. Libretaxi is a mouthful. The only good thing about it is that it's descriptive. It doesn't really stick in your mind like Uber does, or their branding. Disclaimer: I think marketing is a parasitic industry that gets way too much money for the value they provide. But marketing is important because it works.

Traster 6y ago

I'm not saying being able to hail a ride on an App isn't a good thing, I'm saying it's not a competitive advantage and it doesn't seem to significantly increase the profitability of the service. There was a time when you could have argued that Uber could raise the occupancy rates of the cabs - that doesn't seem to have worked out though, through a combination of smart algorithms and scale, that doesn't seem to have materialized. The scooters, again, I'm not sure are actually economically viable, and are also very clearly a regulatory issue - being banned by multiple cities and essentially working on a model of littering an entire city with cheap scooters.