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Bolt has a cool web interface and they really don't want you to use it

305 points by kuba-orlik 4y ago

blagie 4y ago
If I were to speculate, Bolt steals and monetizes a ton of your data. App gives access to GPS, which can then be sold to hedge funds, advertisers, etc., with some veneer of GDPR-compliance. Perhaps customers are no longer sustainable without that.
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 4y ago
This reminds me of Reddit's approach to mobile. They make their mobile web interface excruciating to use, and block features client side just to push you onto their app. I'm guessing it has to do with mobile users being more lucrative?
- donatzsky 4y ago
  More lucrative in the sense that they can collect a lot more information on the user :/
  - guilamu 4y ago
    And that's it is a bit harder to block ads in-app.
    - kylebenzlee 4y ago
- draw_down 4y ago
- martin_a 4y ago
  Add the German site "ebay-kleinanzeigen.de" to this list. Some responsive design would be easy, but they'd rather have their users use the app with more ads and all the other sweet revenue juice.
- laurencei 4y ago
  Its funny though - because their mobile web interface is SOOOO bad, I'm using the "Apollo" app, which means I dont see any Reddit ads, and its a much better experience. If they didnt have such a crappy web experience, I would probably just use the native web page and see some ads. So its actually driving people away to alternatives that reduces their revenue. Crazy...
  - throwaway2048 4y ago
    I'm about 90% sure that reddit is going to pull a twitter and kill off API access so apps like Apollo no longer function.
    - brycewray 4y ago
      The result of which will be, paraphrasing an old letter to the editor for a magazine that had temporarily stopped publishing such letters... ==== Dear Reddit, What a coincidence. You've stopped allowing third-party apps to have access to your API, and I've stopped visiting your site. Sincerely, A Former User
      - sp332 4y ago
        Is that a net negative for them though? Unless you're a really active or popular poster, you're probably just costing them money browsing the site and not looking at ads.
        brycewray 4y ago
        Yeah, thought of that after I replied. OTOH, it would leave them with people not sufficiently tech-savvy to block ads, which is reminiscent of the old joke about a jury’s being composed of “12 people who weren’t smart enough to evade jury duty.” I guess they don’t care about that one way or the other as long as Some EyeBalls See Ads.
        sp332 4y ago
- kuba-orlik 4y ago
  My suspicion is that it's harder to monitor network traffic in an app than it is on the Web, and they want to push as much trackers as possible
  - nguyenkien 4y ago
    You mean easier to track on app than web, right?
    - pixl97 4y ago
      "This app would like to use location services" 'Allow' Or 'Uninstall'
- golergka 4y ago
  Reddit is just content that you browse and occasionally leave a text comment on, it fits browser perfectly. A taxi app, on the other hand, has a lot of functionality that is very hard to fit into a browser and implement well.
  - stavros 4y ago
    I have a location where I am and a location I want to get to. I need a way to specify the two, and a way to enter payment info. That is literally all a taxi app should do.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      Why is that all the taxi app should do? Getting a message "heavy traffic, your car has been delayed" is what everyone else seeming rational really wants. Messaging and awareness of the current state of the transaction they are in.
      - stavros 4y ago
        Before it arrives, you mean? That's still not something that a web page can't easily do.
        hakfoo 4y ago
        Why not? You have a page with a piece of JavaScript on it. Every 30 seconds it pings back "What's the status of request 12345678?" and updates a div. If Domino's can display "your order has been handed to Steve for delivery", then a taxi service can say "Tom is stuck on the 405."
        stavros 4y ago
        I agree, it was a double negative.
        pixl97 4y ago
        You mean the same Javascript that gets paused when you go to another tab?
- edmcnulty101 4y ago
  Reddit mobile web is so full of dark patterns. It really put a dent in how much I used to love Reddit. And the mobile app is terrible terrible turd of epic proportions. The person who designed it is a monster.
- unsafecast 4y ago
  They do the same thing to old.reddit.com (cookie banners redirect there, etc) Like, I get that you don't update it anymore, and I don't need (or want) you to, but the new version is insanely slow on my computer, so just let me use whatever I want please.
  - rekoil 4y ago
    The "new" redesign is just so bad. Viewing a post only shows comments 1 level deep, and then to see the rest of the thread you have to click "continue this thread" and then you have to go back to get to any other threads, just constant tiresome clicks... Reading the comments on a post in old reddit is a pleasure, but in the redesign it's a complete mess. Why? Oh and what the hell is the deal with links to content containing other completely unrelated content as well? The day they kill old.reddit.com or API access to force me to stop using Apollo (which is an insanely well-built reddit client for iOS) is the day I'll just reluctantly stop using reddit entirely.
    - unsafecast 4y ago
      I barely use it anymore, but a lot of search results lead to (mostly helpful) reddit threads. If old.reddit.com dies I'll stop clicking on reddit links (even if I wanted, the new one so extremely slow for me it's borderline unusable).
- cdrini 4y ago
  You can actually disable the open in app prompt; it's kind of hidden, but if you open the menu > settings > uncheck "Request to open in app". This makes it usable for me.
- retube 4y ago
  try this www.reddit.com/.compact. No ads, a billion times easier to grok
growt 4y ago
I don’t install social media apps like Reddit, Facebook or Twitter. And all of them are trying to force me to install their apps. There is even a similar restriction with Facebook messenger, which you can use in mobile Chrome if you use the “request desktop site” feature, but not on the normal mobile site.
muh_gradle 4y ago
I thought this was about Bolt, the payment and checkout app.
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  I know, it's a bit confusing for non EU users, but Bolt (the ride hailing app, formerly Taxify) is quite popular at least in the Baltics and in a bunch of other random countries (I used it in Kenya a lot and it worked quite well)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Fiahil 4y ago
> (I'm not going to share the particular details on which request and which query parameter that is) Why not ? It's not like that would matter anyway...
- kuba-orlik 4y ago
  Author here. I just don't want to make patching it easier for Bolt
  - natch 4y ago
    About one thing you said, Apple and Google need not be lumped together. They are as different as night and day.
    - unsafecast 4y ago
      I think they meant that ios and android are the only companies that apps are made for (so they're the only platforms people actually use), hence it's a duopoly.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - andrew_ 4y ago
    That doesn't add up. Even if they become aware of the thread and were oblivious as to the side effect of omitting the parameter, they're going to be able to enumerate the query parameters they use internally fairly quickly.
  - Fiahil 4y ago
    Well, I don't like to be a party pooper, but there's only two way this can go : - nobody working at Bolt care that they geofencing is lame. The fault was there since the beginning and the two freelancers maintaining the web version have a long backlog, little visibility and no bargaining power. Plus, they haven't got their contract renewed yet. - They have no idea your workaround exists. Even if they are bored enough to read Hacker News on a Sunday, their web app is going to be discontinued on the next API upgrade anyway. Bonus point : An app is just a nice frontend. I'm pretty sure you could make your own web client and order your own ride with a few API calls even if they patch the fault.
mojuba 4y ago
There's an (unverified) myth that retention on mobile apps is better. This is one of those things that marketing people keep telling each other without ever verifying the facts. (Unless you deliberately make the web version inferior, of course.) The reasoning behind it is that you should take real estate on the user's home screen at all costs, because your app's icon will serve as a reminder and people will allegedly come back to it and open more often. But what matters at the end of the day is the product and the value it brings to the users. I'd argue that deceiving the users to provide real estate for your app does not help your business in the long term. If you get more installs today by coercing them (like Reddit does, for example) you will most definitely see some other metric such as retention decline over time. Broadly, users - us that is - are not idiots. Deception works momentarily and can have an immediate effect on some metrics. Long term though, every user and no matter how smart or dumb, will eventually assess the value it gets them against the money, against their time, or against the "home screen real estate" they provided. Speaking from my own experience with multiple mobile apps: there are many ways you can trick the users but you can't trick the longer terms statistics.
- danpalmer 4y ago
  You say unverified, but I’m pretty sure there’s lots of verification for this. Obviously it will depend on the service or app, but it’s a well known trend. At my previous job our app had much higher retention than our web product, despite the web product being much more mature, modern, and feature rich. We verified this across multiple marketing channels, and looked at long term user retention over years.
  - mojuba 4y ago
    Could it be that the mobile interface was simply better in terms of speed, usability, smoothness of the UX? Complex web apps honestly often look and feel shite in the browser.
    - asutekku 4y ago
      Nah, people retain on mobile apps because they have a simple icon to use to get there. It’s extra effort to remember the name of the service and write down the address.
gregdoesit 4y ago
I formerly worked at Uber. I’m surprised that Bolt blocks the web app from working. Uber also built a web app which is incredibly lightweight - here’s a summary on how it was built [1]. It’s a life saver especially if e.g. at an airport and you pay for data over roaming. Uber doesn’t exactly advertise m.uber.com, but there’s no blocking of it. My suspect is that Bold wants you to use their app as they can eg send push notifications, and gather more metadata from users - some of which can be used for eg more signal on determining if a request might be fraudulent. [1] https://eng.uber.com/m-uber/ https://eng.uber.com/m-uber/
- captn3m0 4y ago
  Uber actually had two of these: m.uber and dial.uber.com which was geo-fenced to India and from what I understood (looking at the UX, API calls etc) built by a separate team. The latter was shut down unceremoniously a few years ago, but that was always my favourite thing to point out how over-engineered Uber often was - to the point of having two separate mobile websites for the exact same purpose.
  - gregdoesit 4y ago
    Wow, I never knew of dial.uber.com!! m.uber.com was built by an engineering team in India, but for global usage.
- mattlondon 4y ago
  Just tried it in London - logged in as usual, all looks good until you try to book, then it tells you booking is not available and to use the app.
- pbreit 4y ago
  Lyft has a nice one, too: https://ride.lyft.com/ https://ride.lyft.com/
- notpushkin 4y ago
  I'm not sure if it isn't blocked now, but I remember m.uber being blocked for Russian users a couple years ago. My phone died and I had to change trains in a couple dozen minutes in the middle of the night, so this wasn't a very pleasant experience :')
current_thing 4y ago
> we, the users, are compliant with such abuse of monopoly. But Bolt is not a monopoly. There are many taxi services in Riga. > I invite you to boycott any company that forces (or coerces) you to install an app... I do not think I will boycott Bolt just because you hacked their product and somehow become outraged. Bolt rides are cheaper than the alternative and .. the app works. The alternative mainstream taxi app needs an ios upgrade, and the ios upgrade fails on my shitty old phone. Edit: There is no uber in riga looks like. Nice work, but running a company that generates cash at scale is hard. So i am sympathetic to the app developer.
- edvards 4y ago
  Not really, it is sort of a monopoly. The only competitor app we had was Yandex Taxi, but ever since the war we don't have it here anymore.
  - atlasunshrugged 4y ago
    Did Uber exit the market in the region completely?
    - edvards 4y ago
      It never was a thing in Latvia, and neither was Lyft. I don't recall Bolt (ex Taxify) ever having another app competitor except Yandex Taxi
    - Strom 4y ago
      For what it's worth Uber is still in the neighboring Estonia, which is also the headquarters of Bolt. Uber entered Estonia quite early and did its classic market share grab where it completely dominated. However they quickly lost that market share to Bolt (in a period of a few years, and even before it was called Bolt - it was Taxify back then) because of local market understanding and more concentrated marketing/advertising. Nowadays Uber still "works", but you have to wait 20 minutes for a car, compared to 2 minutes with Bolt. I get a sense that a good chunk of Uber drivers are banned from Bolt, but this is just a hunch based on the Uber drivers accepting low fee rides during surge pricing on Bolt.
Hamcha 4y ago
Does this kind of stuff really never backfire? I can see maybe with Bolt or Uber since you're in a hurry you might just cave, but I see this behavior everywhere! In a world where every app tries to exploit "spur of the moment" brain shortcircuits a big nag seems counterintuitive, e.g. Reddit's "Download the app or go away" is my free reminder that I have better things to do.
ehnto 4y ago
> So basically I made it easier for me to give Bolt money. You're welcome, Bolt! This is the key takeaway I think, so many online businesses spend so much time trying to push me into their app, or accounts, or subscriptions, that they forget they're supposed to be taking my money. There are plenty of services I would have loved to use, but ya'll made it so damn hard to give you my money and order your services that I gave up.
- pixl97 4y ago
  There are some people's money that's not worth taking for one reason or another. In the software world it's not uncommon to loose customers because the features they need would cost too much in support and upkeep vs the revenue it brings in.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  What you're missing is that a large majority of tech was never about customers' money. It's about "growth & engagement" which can be leveraged to raise astronomical amounts of VC funding, much more than the product itself is ever expected to make (sometimes the product is fundamentally unprofitable and will never make any money).
gtirloni 4y ago
> without an annoying app! I fail to see why an app that delivers the promised feature can be annoying. More annoying than installing extensions, messing with HTTP requests, etc?
- AntonyGarand 4y ago
  Have a look at the images on top of the post, the bolt websites highlight 5 reasons why you might prefer to use the browser. If Bolt didn't artificially geo-restrict this feature, navigating to their site would be all you need to do, and that's less annoying than using their app. The current method, installing an extension and making a rule for it, is the result of this restriction, but would not be needed without bolt's restrictions.
  - gtirloni 4y ago
    I'd just have installed the app and got on with my life. But I admire the effort.
    - dangus 4y ago
      Same. If there's a problem, it's not this particular app, it's the status quo of Apple and Google's ecosystem. I think there are really obvious reasons for ridesharing and taxi apps to exclusively use apps. Notifications are very important to the experience (which you can't do on iOS Safari). Having persistent location access like a navigation app is another key part of the system. Don't like it? Put your arm up and hail a cab or call the dispatch office to request a ride, that's what we had to do not even 20 years ago. The app store duopoly and privacy problem isn't one that's solved by playing whack-a-mole with individual companies on those platforms. The way to solve those problems is by regulating Google and Apple's App Stores for both privacy and business practices.
      - kuba-orlik 4y ago
        > Don't like it? Put your arm up and hail a cab or call the dispatch office to request a ride, that's what we had to do not even 20 years ago. I usually do this and call taxis by phone whenever I can, but in Riga this was exceptionally difficult due to language constraints
verisimi 4y ago
I'm glad that geo-fencing was mentioned. This is what I think all these apps - Kuba, Bolt and all those food delivery companies are. They are changing behaviour at present, they make things easy and advantageous for the user. Then the trap will be sprung. Similar to how corporate petrol stations and corporate super stores drop their prices to force local shops out of business. Once they have control and a monopolistic position they can do what they like re prices. Here these companies are working with governance directives to decrease traffic on the roads - it suits the corporates for consumers to have less ability to travel. Making it easy for food, local travel etc whilst making it uncomfortable to have a car (extra regulations, decreasing capacity on roads, greater licensing fees, etc) is part of the plan. The concern is that once we lose the freedom of independent travel that we have with private cars, that won't be coming back. You will be geo-fenced. This itself fits very nicely with the dystopian agenda I see on the horizon, where if you are not considered a good citizen, your ability to travel and interact with the system will be curtailed. We see this with the freezing of protestor bank accounts in Canada, China's social credit system, green passes to access shops, etc. Geo fencing will be a part of that.
- AtNightWeCode 4y ago
  Yes. The trend I have seen is that companies reversed the process when it comes to blocking. They block everything and then open for the traffic they want. Any new or minor ISP is blocked by default.
- verisimi 4y ago
  > This is what I think all these apps - Kuba, Bolt and all those food delivery companies are. I meant Uber, Bolt and all those food delivery companies are!! Not the author's name!
darepublic 4y ago
Web too good and too free. So we get crap like Reddit harrassing mobile web users to use their app and purposely sabotaging their own web interface to further that.
Strom 4y ago
As a daily Bolt user I have two main guesses as to why they want everyone using the app. 1) GPS tracking. They want to know where you are at all times. The app makes this tracking easier than a webpage. 2) Upselling. The Bolt app has front and center upselling to their car rental service, their scooter rental service, and their food delivery service. All these services share the same account and payment info too. -- Do these exist in the web version? I don't see them on the screenshots. These upsells can be implemented on the web too of course, but that probably hasn't happened as it requires web apps for those services too.
nicbou 4y ago
I can't speak for others, but I refuse to use most mobile apps. Websites run in a much smaller sandbox with an ad blocker. I can trust them to stop running code on my device after I close the tab. It won't try to hijack my attention with push notifications and icon badges. If a business forces me to use their app, I won't use that business until I'm out of alternatives.
dreamcompiler 4y ago
From the thread: > So basically I made it easier for me to give Bolt money. You're welcome, Bolt! But does Bolt even want my money? Maybe the real reason they push apps so hard is that apps allow more access to that sweet, sweet private data on my phone so they can sell it, which is their real cash cow?
pjmlp 4y ago
Yeah, unless we are talking about games or special hardware access, mobile Web has become good enough for this kind of use cases. Naturally these kind of dark patterns to force apps don't apply.

305 points by kuba-orlik 4y ago

If I were to speculate, Bolt steals and monetizes a ton of your data. App gives access to GPS, which can then be sold to hedge funds, advertisers, etc., with some veneer of GDPR-compliance. Perhaps customers are no longer sustainable without that.

jjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 4y ago

This reminds me of Reddit's approach to mobile. They make their mobile web interface excruciating to use, and block features client side just to push you onto their app. I'm guessing it has to do with mobile users being more lucrative?

donatzsky 4y ago
More lucrative in the sense that they can collect a lot more information on the user :/
- guilamu 4y ago
  And that's it is a bit harder to block ads in-app.
  - kylebenzlee 4y ago
draw_down 4y ago
martin_a 4y ago
Add the German site "ebay-kleinanzeigen.de" to this list. Some responsive design would be easy, but they'd rather have their users use the app with more ads and all the other sweet revenue juice.
laurencei 4y ago
Its funny though - because their mobile web interface is SOOOO bad, I'm using the "Apollo" app, which means I dont see any Reddit ads, and its a much better experience. If they didnt have such a crappy web experience, I would probably just use the native web page and see some ads. So its actually driving people away to alternatives that reduces their revenue. Crazy...
- throwaway2048 4y ago
  I'm about 90% sure that reddit is going to pull a twitter and kill off API access so apps like Apollo no longer function.
  - brycewray 4y ago
    The result of which will be, paraphrasing an old letter to the editor for a magazine that had temporarily stopped publishing such letters... ==== Dear Reddit, What a coincidence. You've stopped allowing third-party apps to have access to your API, and I've stopped visiting your site. Sincerely, A Former User
    - sp332 4y ago
      Is that a net negative for them though? Unless you're a really active or popular poster, you're probably just costing them money browsing the site and not looking at ads.
      - brycewray 4y ago
        Yeah, thought of that after I replied. OTOH, it would leave them with people not sufficiently tech-savvy to block ads, which is reminiscent of the old joke about a jury’s being composed of “12 people who weren’t smart enough to evade jury duty.” I guess they don’t care about that one way or the other as long as Some EyeBalls See Ads.
        sp332 4y ago
kuba-orlik 4y ago
My suspicion is that it's harder to monitor network traffic in an app than it is on the Web, and they want to push as much trackers as possible
- nguyenkien 4y ago
  You mean easier to track on app than web, right?
  - pixl97 4y ago
    "This app would like to use location services" 'Allow' Or 'Uninstall'
golergka 4y ago
Reddit is just content that you browse and occasionally leave a text comment on, it fits browser perfectly. A taxi app, on the other hand, has a lot of functionality that is very hard to fit into a browser and implement well.
- stavros 4y ago
  I have a location where I am and a location I want to get to. I need a way to specify the two, and a way to enter payment info. That is literally all a taxi app should do.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Why is that all the taxi app should do? Getting a message "heavy traffic, your car has been delayed" is what everyone else seeming rational really wants. Messaging and awareness of the current state of the transaction they are in.
    - stavros 4y ago
      Before it arrives, you mean? That's still not something that a web page can't easily do.
      - hakfoo 4y ago
        Why not? You have a page with a piece of JavaScript on it. Every 30 seconds it pings back "What's the status of request 12345678?" and updates a div. If Domino's can display "your order has been handed to Steve for delivery", then a taxi service can say "Tom is stuck on the 405."
        stavros 4y ago
        I agree, it was a double negative.
        pixl97 4y ago
        You mean the same Javascript that gets paused when you go to another tab?
edmcnulty101 4y ago
Reddit mobile web is so full of dark patterns. It really put a dent in how much I used to love Reddit. And the mobile app is terrible terrible turd of epic proportions. The person who designed it is a monster.
unsafecast 4y ago
They do the same thing to old.reddit.com (cookie banners redirect there, etc) Like, I get that you don't update it anymore, and I don't need (or want) you to, but the new version is insanely slow on my computer, so just let me use whatever I want please.
- rekoil 4y ago
  The "new" redesign is just so bad. Viewing a post only shows comments 1 level deep, and then to see the rest of the thread you have to click "continue this thread" and then you have to go back to get to any other threads, just constant tiresome clicks... Reading the comments on a post in old reddit is a pleasure, but in the redesign it's a complete mess. Why? Oh and what the hell is the deal with links to content containing other completely unrelated content as well? The day they kill old.reddit.com or API access to force me to stop using Apollo (which is an insanely well-built reddit client for iOS) is the day I'll just reluctantly stop using reddit entirely.
  - unsafecast 4y ago
    I barely use it anymore, but a lot of search results lead to (mostly helpful) reddit threads. If old.reddit.com dies I'll stop clicking on reddit links (even if I wanted, the new one so extremely slow for me it's borderline unusable).
cdrini 4y ago
You can actually disable the open in app prompt; it's kind of hidden, but if you open the menu > settings > uncheck "Request to open in app". This makes it usable for me.
retube 4y ago
try this www.reddit.com/.compact. No ads, a billion times easier to grok

growt 4y ago

I don’t install social media apps like Reddit, Facebook or Twitter. And all of them are trying to force me to install their apps. There is even a similar restriction with Facebook messenger, which you can use in mobile Chrome if you use the “request desktop site” feature, but not on the normal mobile site.

muh_gradle 4y ago

I thought this was about Bolt, the payment and checkout app.

atlasunshrugged 4y ago
I know, it's a bit confusing for non EU users, but Bolt (the ride hailing app, formerly Taxify) is quite popular at least in the Baltics and in a bunch of other random countries (I used it in Kenya a lot and it worked quite well)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Fiahil 4y ago

> (I'm not going to share the particular details on which request and which query parameter that is) Why not ? It's not like that would matter anyway...

kuba-orlik 4y ago
Author here. I just don't want to make patching it easier for Bolt
- natch 4y ago
  About one thing you said, Apple and Google need not be lumped together. They are as different as night and day.
  - unsafecast 4y ago
    I think they meant that ios and android are the only companies that apps are made for (so they're the only platforms people actually use), hence it's a duopoly.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- andrew_ 4y ago
  That doesn't add up. Even if they become aware of the thread and were oblivious as to the side effect of omitting the parameter, they're going to be able to enumerate the query parameters they use internally fairly quickly.
- Fiahil 4y ago
  Well, I don't like to be a party pooper, but there's only two way this can go : - nobody working at Bolt care that they geofencing is lame. The fault was there since the beginning and the two freelancers maintaining the web version have a long backlog, little visibility and no bargaining power. Plus, they haven't got their contract renewed yet. - They have no idea your workaround exists. Even if they are bored enough to read Hacker News on a Sunday, their web app is going to be discontinued on the next API upgrade anyway. Bonus point : An app is just a nice frontend. I'm pretty sure you could make your own web client and order your own ride with a few API calls even if they patch the fault.

mojuba 4y ago

There's an (unverified) myth that retention on mobile apps is better. This is one of those things that marketing people keep telling each other without ever verifying the facts. (Unless you deliberately make the web version inferior, of course.) The reasoning behind it is that you should take real estate on the user's home screen at all costs, because your app's icon will serve as a reminder and people will allegedly come back to it and open more often. But what matters at the end of the day is the product and the value it brings to the users. I'd argue that deceiving the users to provide real estate for your app does not help your business in the long term. If you get more installs today by coercing them (like Reddit does, for example) you will most definitely see some other metric such as retention decline over time. Broadly, users - us that is - are not idiots. Deception works momentarily and can have an immediate effect on some metrics. Long term though, every user and no matter how smart or dumb, will eventually assess the value it gets them against the money, against their time, or against the "home screen real estate" they provided. Speaking from my own experience with multiple mobile apps: there are many ways you can trick the users but you can't trick the longer terms statistics.

danpalmer 4y ago
You say unverified, but I’m pretty sure there’s lots of verification for this. Obviously it will depend on the service or app, but it’s a well known trend. At my previous job our app had much higher retention than our web product, despite the web product being much more mature, modern, and feature rich. We verified this across multiple marketing channels, and looked at long term user retention over years.
- mojuba 4y ago
  Could it be that the mobile interface was simply better in terms of speed, usability, smoothness of the UX? Complex web apps honestly often look and feel shite in the browser.
  - asutekku 4y ago
    Nah, people retain on mobile apps because they have a simple icon to use to get there. It’s extra effort to remember the name of the service and write down the address.

gregdoesit 4y ago

I formerly worked at Uber. I’m surprised that Bolt blocks the web app from working. Uber also built a web app which is incredibly lightweight - here’s a summary on how it was built [1]. It’s a life saver especially if e.g. at an airport and you pay for data over roaming. Uber doesn’t exactly advertise m.uber.com, but there’s no blocking of it. My suspect is that Bold wants you to use their app as they can eg send push notifications, and gather more metadata from users - some of which can be used for eg more signal on determining if a request might be fraudulent. [1] https://eng.uber.com/m-uber/ https://eng.uber.com/m-uber/

captn3m0 4y ago
Uber actually had two of these: m.uber and dial.uber.com which was geo-fenced to India and from what I understood (looking at the UX, API calls etc) built by a separate team. The latter was shut down unceremoniously a few years ago, but that was always my favourite thing to point out how over-engineered Uber often was - to the point of having two separate mobile websites for the exact same purpose.
- gregdoesit 4y ago
  Wow, I never knew of dial.uber.com!! m.uber.com was built by an engineering team in India, but for global usage.
mattlondon 4y ago
Just tried it in London - logged in as usual, all looks good until you try to book, then it tells you booking is not available and to use the app.
pbreit 4y ago
Lyft has a nice one, too: https://ride.lyft.com/ https://ride.lyft.com/
notpushkin 4y ago
I'm not sure if it isn't blocked now, but I remember m.uber being blocked for Russian users a couple years ago. My phone died and I had to change trains in a couple dozen minutes in the middle of the night, so this wasn't a very pleasant experience :')

current_thing 4y ago

> we, the users, are compliant with such abuse of monopoly. But Bolt is not a monopoly. There are many taxi services in Riga. > I invite you to boycott any company that forces (or coerces) you to install an app... I do not think I will boycott Bolt just because you hacked their product and somehow become outraged. Bolt rides are cheaper than the alternative and .. the app works. The alternative mainstream taxi app needs an ios upgrade, and the ios upgrade fails on my shitty old phone. Edit: There is no uber in riga looks like. Nice work, but running a company that generates cash at scale is hard. So i am sympathetic to the app developer.

edvards 4y ago
Not really, it is sort of a monopoly. The only competitor app we had was Yandex Taxi, but ever since the war we don't have it here anymore.
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  Did Uber exit the market in the region completely?
  - edvards 4y ago
    It never was a thing in Latvia, and neither was Lyft. I don't recall Bolt (ex Taxify) ever having another app competitor except Yandex Taxi
  - Strom 4y ago
    For what it's worth Uber is still in the neighboring Estonia, which is also the headquarters of Bolt. Uber entered Estonia quite early and did its classic market share grab where it completely dominated. However they quickly lost that market share to Bolt (in a period of a few years, and even before it was called Bolt - it was Taxify back then) because of local market understanding and more concentrated marketing/advertising. Nowadays Uber still "works", but you have to wait 20 minutes for a car, compared to 2 minutes with Bolt. I get a sense that a good chunk of Uber drivers are banned from Bolt, but this is just a hunch based on the Uber drivers accepting low fee rides during surge pricing on Bolt.

Hamcha 4y ago

Does this kind of stuff really never backfire? I can see maybe with Bolt or Uber since you're in a hurry you might just cave, but I see this behavior everywhere! In a world where every app tries to exploit "spur of the moment" brain shortcircuits a big nag seems counterintuitive, e.g. Reddit's "Download the app or go away" is my free reminder that I have better things to do.

ehnto 4y ago

> So basically I made it easier for me to give Bolt money. You're welcome, Bolt! This is the key takeaway I think, so many online businesses spend so much time trying to push me into their app, or accounts, or subscriptions, that they forget they're supposed to be taking my money. There are plenty of services I would have loved to use, but ya'll made it so damn hard to give you my money and order your services that I gave up.

pixl97 4y ago
There are some people's money that's not worth taking for one reason or another. In the software world it's not uncommon to loose customers because the features they need would cost too much in support and upkeep vs the revenue it brings in.
Nextgrid 4y ago
What you're missing is that a large majority of tech was never about customers' money. It's about "growth & engagement" which can be leveraged to raise astronomical amounts of VC funding, much more than the product itself is ever expected to make (sometimes the product is fundamentally unprofitable and will never make any money).

gtirloni 4y ago

> without an annoying app! I fail to see why an app that delivers the promised feature can be annoying. More annoying than installing extensions, messing with HTTP requests, etc?

AntonyGarand 4y ago
Have a look at the images on top of the post, the bolt websites highlight 5 reasons why you might prefer to use the browser. If Bolt didn't artificially geo-restrict this feature, navigating to their site would be all you need to do, and that's less annoying than using their app. The current method, installing an extension and making a rule for it, is the result of this restriction, but would not be needed without bolt's restrictions.
- gtirloni 4y ago
  I'd just have installed the app and got on with my life. But I admire the effort.
  - dangus 4y ago
    Same. If there's a problem, it's not this particular app, it's the status quo of Apple and Google's ecosystem. I think there are really obvious reasons for ridesharing and taxi apps to exclusively use apps. Notifications are very important to the experience (which you can't do on iOS Safari). Having persistent location access like a navigation app is another key part of the system. Don't like it? Put your arm up and hail a cab or call the dispatch office to request a ride, that's what we had to do not even 20 years ago. The app store duopoly and privacy problem isn't one that's solved by playing whack-a-mole with individual companies on those platforms. The way to solve those problems is by regulating Google and Apple's App Stores for both privacy and business practices.
    - kuba-orlik 4y ago
      > Don't like it? Put your arm up and hail a cab or call the dispatch office to request a ride, that's what we had to do not even 20 years ago. I usually do this and call taxis by phone whenever I can, but in Riga this was exceptionally difficult due to language constraints

verisimi 4y ago

I'm glad that geo-fencing was mentioned. This is what I think all these apps - Kuba, Bolt and all those food delivery companies are. They are changing behaviour at present, they make things easy and advantageous for the user. Then the trap will be sprung. Similar to how corporate petrol stations and corporate super stores drop their prices to force local shops out of business. Once they have control and a monopolistic position they can do what they like re prices. Here these companies are working with governance directives to decrease traffic on the roads - it suits the corporates for consumers to have less ability to travel. Making it easy for food, local travel etc whilst making it uncomfortable to have a car (extra regulations, decreasing capacity on roads, greater licensing fees, etc) is part of the plan. The concern is that once we lose the freedom of independent travel that we have with private cars, that won't be coming back. You will be geo-fenced. This itself fits very nicely with the dystopian agenda I see on the horizon, where if you are not considered a good citizen, your ability to travel and interact with the system will be curtailed. We see this with the freezing of protestor bank accounts in Canada, China's social credit system, green passes to access shops, etc. Geo fencing will be a part of that.

AtNightWeCode 4y ago
Yes. The trend I have seen is that companies reversed the process when it comes to blocking. They block everything and then open for the traffic they want. Any new or minor ISP is blocked by default.
verisimi 4y ago
> This is what I think all these apps - Kuba, Bolt and all those food delivery companies are. I meant Uber, Bolt and all those food delivery companies are!! Not the author's name!

darepublic 4y ago

Web too good and too free. So we get crap like Reddit harrassing mobile web users to use their app and purposely sabotaging their own web interface to further that.

Strom 4y ago

As a daily Bolt user I have two main guesses as to why they want everyone using the app. 1) GPS tracking. They want to know where you are at all times. The app makes this tracking easier than a webpage. 2) Upselling. The Bolt app has front and center upselling to their car rental service, their scooter rental service, and their food delivery service. All these services share the same account and payment info too. -- Do these exist in the web version? I don't see them on the screenshots. These upsells can be implemented on the web too of course, but that probably hasn't happened as it requires web apps for those services too.

nicbou 4y ago

I can't speak for others, but I refuse to use most mobile apps. Websites run in a much smaller sandbox with an ad blocker. I can trust them to stop running code on my device after I close the tab. It won't try to hijack my attention with push notifications and icon badges. If a business forces me to use their app, I won't use that business until I'm out of alternatives.

dreamcompiler 4y ago

From the thread: > So basically I made it easier for me to give Bolt money. You're welcome, Bolt! But does Bolt even want my money? Maybe the real reason they push apps so hard is that apps allow more access to that sweet, sweet private data on my phone so they can sell it, which is their real cash cow?

pjmlp 4y ago

Yeah, unless we are talking about games or special hardware access, mobile Web has become good enough for this kind of use cases. Naturally these kind of dark patterns to force apps don't apply.