Chatbots were the next big thing: what happened?

Re:Chatbots were the next big thing: what happened? by SimonPStevens on Friday June 08, 2018 @03:50PM (#17269097)

Except Uber didn't start as a taxi replacement company. If you only remember it as a taxi company it was already after it had started to become successful.

It was initially a carpooling app. The original pitch was that regular drivers would just drive to their own intended location and have an ability to see people on route who wanted to go the same way. Much harder to pick that idea out as a future billion dollar company.

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Re:Chatbots were the next big thing: what happened? by nixme on Friday June 08, 2018 @04:13PM (#17269301)

What are you talking about? The original pitch was a black car service to fix the hailing problems of SF. It was even originally called UberCab. https://medium.com/@gc/the-beginning-of-uber-7fb17e544851

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Re:Chatbots were the next big thing: what happened? by bertil on Friday June 08, 2018 @05:38PM (#17269928)

The original pitch was a black car service, but the legend that TK talks about, in Paris in the snowstorm of December 2008, was that he could ask “anyone there” to drive him, which is closer to carpooling.

(I was at that conference: everything went wrong, but it was mostly super cold. Cars were stuck in slippery snow, so someone suggesting the idea of carpooling sounds odd, but I suspect anyone there would have loved to wait out the traffic inside a heated car.)

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Re:Chatbots were the next big thing: what happened? by adambyrtek on Friday June 08, 2018 @04:43PM (#17269516)

I think you are talking about Lyft not Uber.

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Re:Chatbots were the next big thing: what happened? by SimonPStevens on Sunday June 10, 2018 @12:28PM (#17278826)

Yup. Looks like it was me that misremembered. My mistake.

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