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A comment on Uber's billion-dollar losses expose the fragile state of the on-demand economy. Parent comment

Re:Uber's billion-dollar losses expose the fragile state of ... by joosters on Friday September 16, 2016 @02:07PM (#12515976)
It's because "sharing" sounds really good. Everyone knows that it is kind to share, so lots of companies try to stick the word on to their own business.

I hate the way that any company with a vaguely peer-to-peer business model calls themselves 'sharing', or 'part of the sharing economy'. It's not just Uber. e.g. Zopa (a p2p loans company) describes itself as 'sharing', but it's a business where people lend money to others for a fee. AirBnB claims to be 'sharing', but at it's core, it is little more than a hotel booking system. Taskrabbit gets described as 'part of the sharing economy' but no-one is sharing anything, you are paying for workers to do chores.

Since when has sharing involved making a profit by charging users?

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Re:Uber's billion-dollar losses expose the fragile state of ... by pm90 on Friday September 16, 2016 @03:31PM (#12516643)
I had a similar thought when I saw a person working for a company called favor (https://favordelivery.com/). The dictionary definition of favor: a kind or helpful act that you do for someone.
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Re:Uber's billion-dollar losses expose the fragile state of ... by personlurking on Friday September 16, 2016 @07:47PM (#12518215)
unless one is a politician or a mobster, of course.
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Re:Uber's billion-dollar losses expose the fragile state of ... by hkmurakami on Friday September 16, 2016 @08:51PM (#12518498)
In the mid 2000's, we were incentivized to call anything remotely possibly nanotechnology related "nano-XYZ". It lead to demonstrably better government grant success.

The behavior isn't even limited to tech startups.

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Re:Uber's billion-dollar losses expose the fragile state of ... by quadrangle on Saturday September 17, 2016 @06:17PM (#12522803)
To be fair, AirBnB has the premise of actual sharing, like I let you use my house when I'm away or stay in my guest room that I share with other people or use for myself at other times… AirBnB is also truly peer-to-peer, at least part of the time. In practice, some of AirBnB is like a hotel, but not all.

In contrast, Uber is not like AirBnB. It sets the rates for drivers, requires certain cars, etc. If Uber really was like AirBnB overall, it'd be a different story.

[ Parent | on HN ]