Recently, a San Francisco start-up has been making some waves in the iPhone community with its new app Uber. Its tag-line is “everyone’s private driver” — and it seems to be just that. The concept is simple: a network of cars with iPhones in them and an app to handle the orders. Uber allows you to order a black car to your location that will take you wherever you need to go. However, it costs about 50 percent more than your average taxi. According to the New York Times, Uber has found success in its hometown of San Francisco as people are enthused by a dependable public transportation service that is quick and efficient. They already have over 1,000 people signed within the metropolitan New York area, says the NYT, and the service is going to be available within the Big Apple soon.
Not only is Uber growing in San Francisco and planning on expanding to New York City, according to the team over at TechCrunch, they are also hoping for a presence in Chicago, Seattle, Boston, and Washington, D.C. The company has just raised $11 million in funding and has begun posting job positions for general managers in the respective cities. It’s going to be interesting to see how the service fairs within a city like New York or Chicago where public transportation is already reliable and plentiful.
I think that there is a certain feeling of exclusivity and mystique surrounding the service, as the writers at TechCrunch speak of a very loyal following in San Francisco already. If you have the money to pay a little extra for the transportation, why not have a black car come pick you up? The developers of this app were definitely thinking, and by the looks of things, Uber is going to go far.
