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Comment by CaptSpify | Hacker News Reader

A lot of devs I know seem to think that Uber's big win was having an app. I think that's why I hear things like Tinder being labeled as "Uber for dating". I've seen a few devs that think you can just create an app that's really just a front-end to their product's webpage.

The app was helpful for Uber, definitely. But moreso, was the change in the way they handled service: ratings, payment, hailing, etc. The app just facilitated those changes.

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Yeah, but you couldn't have done any of that without the app. At best, you could have done it all on a web page accessible by a regular PC, but that wouldn't have gotten anywhere because who's using a desktop/laptop PC while they're standing on the street looking for a ride? Having an app that runs on a portable communications device in your pocket made all those things (hailing, payment, ratings, etc.) possible to do. Really, Uber is just a naturally emergent business enabled by smartphones and the internet; the only thing holding it back was the taxi cartels and their laziness and also obsolete regulations.

This is a good point, but in my mind all of these changes come about because of the app. Suddenly you have a medium that allows you to do these things you couldn't before.

That's what I mean by facilitated. It wasn't having an app that made Uber successful, it was doing things that cabs couldn't. The app was just the means to the end.

I think there's a lot of "we need an app" thinking in the industry, but no thought as to what that app will do.

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