Re:Uber opens at $42 per share
by busymom0 on Friday May 10, 2019 @07:01PM
(#19883080)
That's a very good point too which I missed. People don't care about whether their friends are using Uber or some other app. They care about whether the ride is cheaper. It's a bottom of the barrel pricing game in ride sharing apps.
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They also care about wait times. And drivers care about utilization.
"Taxi apps" definitely have network effects from the two sided market, though not as strong as a social network.
From what I have found personally, the wait times on Uber and Lyft are the exact same in my area in Canada. Every driver which is on Uber is also on Lyft. So I don't think the network effect is helping them much as riders aren't really getting anything different in terms of wait times. Also this is even after Lyft barely being about 1 year old in my city while Uber has been around for many years.