July 22, 2014
Facebook and Uber in talks for integration on Messenger
A deal would allow Messenger to start making money, while Uber would get access to 200M users
There' are a lot of potentially interesting partnerships out there in the tech world, and ways that two companies can come together to enhance each other's product.
For example a company like Lyft can partner with AnyPerk to help the company retain drivers. Or younity can team up with GoPro to allow users to instantly stream their videos. These partnerships make sense because one company is giving the other something it cannot do itself.
There is one combination that, I have to admit, I never even thought of: Facebook and Uber. The two companies are currently in talks to integrate the e-hailing service into Facebook Messenger, according to a report from ReCode on Thursday.
So how exactly this would even work? Details on what exactly such an integration would look like are obviously scarce right now, but, as ReCode pointed out, there is some precidence for such a move: users of Chinese messaging service WeChat are able to use a taxi-ordering service called Didi Dache without having to leave the app.
The thinking is that the mashup of Facebook Messenger and Uber would work in a similar way, allowing users to not have to switch apps when they want to contact an Uber driver.
It's easy to see the benefits for both sides.
On a conference call following the release of its second quarter earnings on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg talked about Facebook's future in payments, and how they would be integrated onto its other, stand alone apps, including Messenger.
What he said was that these apps were in the early stages of building up the ecosystem where they would potentially be money makers.
"We've said in a number of comments that we think some of these newer initatives are going to ramp over time. We really do mean that, and we're serious about doing this the right way and building up these ecosystems," he said. "And I think for some of these other apps, we're just going to build all the infrasturure that we need to make it something thats scalable over time, rather than trying to have this be an impact you'll notice over the next short term period of time."
Adding in Uber would certainly be a good first step toward adding in that infrastructure for other future integrations, and it might also be Messenger's first chance to prove its monetary value.
As for Uber, there are a boatload of potential new clients. On the call, Zuckerberg revealed that, as of April, the company had reached 200 million monthly actives on Messenger.
While Uber does not reveal its user numbers, a document that was leaked last year showed that the app had roughly 2 million monthly users as of November of last year. Surely those numbers have gone up, but there's no way its anywhere near 200 million.
Uber just raised $1.4 billion at a $17 billion valuation. Those are some high numbers to justify to investors. Obviously there's going to be some overlap with the Messenger audience, but imagine if Uber can add half of those users, or even a quarter, of those users.
Uber declined to comment on this story. Facebook could not be reached for comment at this time.
(Image source: facebook.com/uber)
Related Companies, Investors, and Entrepreneurs
younity
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
younity creates a personal cloud for all your files, built from your devices and your online services, so that all your devices work as if they were a single device. With younity, you can grab whichever device is most convenient without ever thinking about where a file is.
younity is a ubiquitous data protocol that integrates into device OSes, making them inherently multi-device aware. With younity, users can use any device they own and have access to any file as if it was stored locally on that device, regardless of available storage. With younity, devices simply become screens. Customer Problem: Consumers today are overwhelmingly multi-device users, yet OSes are still designed around single device usage. Consumers have lots of data stuck on their devices. They are unable to put it all in the cloud and/or it costs too much; existing solutions are also management intensive, requiring constant user interaction.
Solution / Product: younity makes all a consumer’s devices work as if they were a single device. By extracting the file system from an OS and putting it into the cloud, younity establishes a singular file system from multiple devices that is pushed back into the native OS. Thus, the OS does not know where files are stored – on the local hard drive, on another device or some online service or all of those places. This eliminates a file’s stored address from a device to an identity. Any device registered to a user has all that person’s files and all devices look the exact same. The only difference between devices is whether there is enough storage to store local or virtual copies.
Competitors: younity is most similar to iCloud. However, unlike iCloud, younity is OS agnostic, application agnostic, file-type agnostic, vastly easier to use and cheap or free for any amount of data.
Target Market: Consumers with 3 or more Internet-enabled devices (over 220M people in the US alone). Research shows: the average household will have 2.2TB of data by 2013; consumers will have an average of 5.8 devices/person by 2015; and 51% of households have both MS and Apple products (as of late 2011). Data synchronization products that accommodate partial data start at about $450/year for 250GB of online storage, with utility online storage costing vastly more. There are currently no cross-platform solutions for users that can accommodate all their data, let alone deliver it into their native device functionality.
Questions and Answers
Q. You've been around since 2010, What's the traction been like?
A. The idea for younity was born in 2010, but the company was angel funded and started hiring in summer of 2011. Our product is not a strong fit for "lean methodology"- it is enormously complicated and simply requires a lot of hands working the keyboard to make it work (typical for heavy duty, client-server software).
The additional challenge was making it simple for consumers. After hiring our team late in 2011, we were able to take our prototype and get a private beta done by July, then launch into public beta in December 2012. Traction has been good since launching in December 2012, we've been adding thousands of users/month and engagement is high.
Q. How are you marketing this? Is there a viral component?
A. Our product is inherently personal (it's a "personal cloud"), which makes the viral coefficient low. However, we've been developing a unique way for people to share any file that is stored on any device making them sharable directly to another person via a private Facebook post. This will be launched the week of Vator Splash.
Q. What's the distribution model? What's the business model? How much will you be charging for this service?
A. younity has a direct to consumer strategy and will be offered as a freemium service that is free for up to 3 devices. For 4 or more, there is a flat annual fee that we anticipate will be around $24/year (although we have not finalized this yet). Other than the limit on devices, the free version of younity is not limited in any way- it is the same as the premium version.
Q. Where do you go from here? What other services could you offer?
A. Currently we are working with a variety of app vendors to enable offline data in their apps via our API. As a ubiquitous data protocol, younity is really about unifying data around a user's identity. This has a variety of applications, with younity being the first.
Q. Is this a consumer-only product? Are you making something for the enterprise?
A. For now, we are focused on leading in the consumer market. However, we are well aware of a variety of enterprise applications to enable an on-premise younity server with a policy engine attached to it. In fact, we regularly are asked if this would be available now (it isn't).
Lyft
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Lyft is a peer-to-peer transportation platform that connects passengers who need rides with drivers willing to provide rides using their own personal vehicles.
Uber
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Uber is a ridesharing service headquartered in San Francisco, United States, which operates in multiple international cities. The company uses a smartphone application to arrange rides between riders and drivers.
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