Opinion: Uber May One Day Be More Valuable Than Facebook

The company is one of the fastest-growing on the planet

One of the odd things about traveling between the Bay Area and New York a lot is the asynchronicity of mass culture between coasts: That is, the things that get popular in the Bay Area (PostMates, Burning Man) don't always get popular in New York right away, and things New Yorkers think are a big deal (cronuts, Banksy) are greeted with shrugs in San Francisco.

Today, the inter-city hype gap I most experience is with Uber. In New York, most people who know about Uber see it as the fanciest of a handful of on-demand car services. (The way it works: You open the Uber app on your smart phone and choose one of several grades of cars — luxury SUV or Prius? — indicate where you want the vehicle to pick you up, and pay for your ride by credit card, with the rate varying according to distance and your choice of vehicle.) In New York, where the yellow cab market is functional and robust, Uber is seen as a good app, but not a life-changing one, and its use is still pretty much limited to young people with disposable income.

(H/T Charles WT)