Hi prawn, rightly or wrongly, we live by the "launch fast" maxim. Sure we had some test data, but a change this big was always going to be a huge leap of faith. So we needed to get it out to confirm previous findings before worrying too much about conversions.

On that note, the risk wasn't just a different format but everything that goes with real-time communications. Not just web sockets or whatever tech, but a real-time human marketplace. The previous format afforded us a lot of luxuries with regard to resource planning and "load balancing". Now with real-time, it's quite tricky. I suspect this is a challenge for Uber too.