(Perhaps SMS plus some feature-phone-level of GPS integration.)
You'll pretty much would have had human operators over every interaction. That very much hinders the Uber-like growth of the service.
Falling back to a human operator isn't that bad either: just charge people a little bit extra to talk to a human.
One of the core features that made me use Uber was the map - I could see where the driver is going and how far away is he. Also, the app is localised into language that I can understand and I can see the price upfront without having to worry about getting scammed. Recently I had to book a taxi over the phone at the end of the world (literally - Ushuaia) in a language that I can barely speak and the experience was rather stressful in comparison with using an app.
Real-time mapping would be tricker if that's really a killer feature for you.
Or a voice connection with an operator.
I wouldn't under estimate the amount of friction reduced in having an app on your phone which a) is always with you, b) can also record top quality video and c) has a data plan good enough to upload there and then.
Yup, definitely. Effective mobile editing was a big driver of it's success.
That being said, while it's definitely more effective and popular on mobile how much of that is just down to more people using the internet on mobile relative to desktop.
This is unlike Maps or Uber which only make sense with mobile and always available location.
I wish I could do software development from my phone the way people casually watch tiktok videos. The least unproductive thing I can currently do when trapped with only a phone is read HN.
I think that the biggest thing to come from mobile was always available location, exemplified by Google Maps which already existed before mobile happened. Many of the most successful apps relied on this.
TikTok is different, in that it could have existed on desktop (but would have looked very different) whereas Uber (for example) definitely couldn't.