Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 09.26 - Uber Wants To Be ‘the operating system for your everyday life’

Episode Date: September 26, 2019

Uber wants to become “the OS for everyday life,” Peloton’s IPO is a good news/bad news situation, the FTC sues Match.com for allegedly catfishing people, stuff I missed from yesterday’s Amazon event, and an “interesting raise” startup that wants to turn renters into home owners. Sponsors: Metalab.co CognitoHQ.com Links: Uber overhauls its app in ambitious bid to become ‘the operating system for your everyday life’ (The Verge) Peloton slides after opening below IPO price in market debut (CNBC) At Least 70 Countries Have Had Disinformation Campaigns, Study Finds (NYTimes) Attorney General Barr Seeks DOJ Facebook Antitrust Probe (Bloomberg) Match.com connected daters to fake accounts to boost subscriptions, US regulators say (The Verge) Amazon’s new Echo Flex lets you put Alexa everywhere in your home (The Verge) Alexa's 'Certified for Humans' wants to eliminate smart-home headaches (CNET) Divvy Homes Raises $43M Series B To Help Renters Become Homeowners (Crunchbase News) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech Meme Right Home for Thursday, September 26th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. Uber wants to become the OS for everyday life. Peloton's IPO is a good news, bad news situation, the FTCSoo's Match.com for allegedly catfishing people, stuff I missed from yesterday's Amazon event and an interesting raise startup that wants to turn renters into homeowners. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Say hello to the new Uber app, because Uber, Uber, has completely overhauled its app to become what it is calling the OS for everyday life, merging ride hailing and food delivery, boosting alternative modes of travel, adding new safety

features, and that is just the beginning. So yeah, open up the Uber app. You'll see two boxes on the launch screen just to get a ride and order food. Making Uber Eats essentially have equal standing to, I don't know, Uber rides, tells you a lot. about Uber's strategy going forward. On the ride side of the equation, quoting the verge, when you plug in your destination if there is a subway or bus that will get you there, it will appear at the top of the list, and it will probably be the cheapest option. To some extent, we're competing against ourselves, Uber CEO Darikos Roshahi said. But we have the philosophy that if there's a better product out there for the user and we think an integrated movement

solution is better for the user, we should be the ones competing against ourselves versus others doing it, end quote. Uber's electric bikes and scooters are getting a boost, too. Starting next month, Uber will begin showing bikes and scooters on the map, both its jump bikes and scooters and rival Lyme's scooters as well. The company will make this change in the 28 cities where its two-wheeled options are available, plus a dozen U.S. cities where Lyme scooters are available via the Uber app, end quote.

But it's actually the new safety features that kind of caught my attention and feel cool to me, if you can believe it. Quoting The Verge again. Uber is introducing a new four-digit pin verification system to make sure riders don't get into the wrong vehicle. If you opt in, you'll need to say the pin out loud to your driver before he or she can start the ride. Uber is also developing a new technology that uses ultrasound waves

to automatically verify you're in the right car. No pin needed. The writer's phone will send this ultrasonic signal to the driver's phone to automatically verify the unique pin. That technology should be ready to roll out in a few months, according to Sachin-Kenzel, head of safety product for Uber, end quote. And remember how I said this is maybe just the beginning? Uber also announced Uber Incubator, a program to let employees and others develop products

and services on top of the Uber platform. So they're hoping to incubate new boxes to add to that home screen in addition to just get a ride and order food, quoting TechCrunch. Our process follows lean startup methodologies, Uber wrote in a blog post. We provide support and resources to teams with a compelling opportunity so they can rapidly pressure test the business model and iterate their idea toward product market fit. Once the business is proven sustainable, it receives funding consistent with disciplined business building best practices to scale to the next stage and merge into the overall Uber platform, end quote. Peloton went public today, and there is good news and bad news. The good news is Peloton priced its IPO at $29 a share at the very top of its range, meaning the company raised $1.16 billion at around an $8.1 billion valuation.

Now for the bad news, the opening trade today was at $27 a share. And at the time of this writing, Peloton was trading below the $25 a share mark representing a nearly 14% drop. Quote, if Peloton remains below $27, it would be on pace to become. the second worst debut of a unicorn this year. Uber currently holds second place spot with a loss of 7.62% on its first day of trading, end quote. The New York Times is reporting that the number of countries deploying political disinformation campaigns on social media has doubled to 70 just since 2017. I think I once said on here that probably eventually we'd see everyone doing this. the costs are so low, the potential impact is reasonable enough, and it's so hard to spot and

stop. Potentially, you can have your intended effect even before you're shut down if you ever are shut down. So why not do it? And also, why stop at countries? Businesses and any powerful interest groups are probably already doing this as well. Here's the lead from the Times piece. In Vietnam, citizens were enlisted to post pro-government messages on their personal Facebook pages. The Guatemalan government used hacked and stolen social media accounts to silence dissenting opinions. Ethiopia's ruling party hired people to influence social media conversations in its favor. Despite increased efforts by internet platforms like Facebook to combat internet disinformation, the use of the techniques by governments around the world is growing,

according to a report released Thursday by researchers at Oxford University. Governments are spreading disinformation to discredit political opponents, bury opposing views and interfere in foreign affairs, end quote. According to the research, Facebook remains number one with a bullet when it comes to being the most popular social network to sow disinformation on. The Times says organized propaganda campaigns were found on Facebook in 56 different countries. Let me try to do this as quickly as possible because I know, I know, believe me, it's the same old story, same old broken record. apparently the Department of Justice intends to investigate Facebook itself, even though, and again, I know it's hard to keep track of this, if you'll recall, the DOJ had divvied things up and had given Facebook to the FTC to handle. So now Facebook could be facing an inquiry from the FTC and the DOJ at the same time with presumably the DOJ investigating separate conduct from what the FTC is examining.

This nugget is interesting and why I'm taking pains to bring this up. According to Bloomberg, the DOJ is reasserting itself in the matter of Facebook at the direct insistence of Attorney General William Barr. Quote, Bar pushed to retain jurisdiction over Facebook, the person said. The agreement with the FTC didn't cover all conduct by the four companies, according to two people familiar with the matter. The Justice Department could also look at some of Amazon's business practices, one of the people said.

Justice Department officials feel obliged. to carry out the department's mandate to enforce the antitrust laws, especially given the widespread concerns over tech platforms, according to a person familiar with the matter. FTC Chairman Joe Simmons believes the Justice Department is infringing on its territory and wrote a letter to the department about the issue, according to one of the people. FTC Chairman Joe Simmons believes the Justice Department is infringing on its territory and wrote a letter to the department about the issue, according to one of the people.

The Justice Department responded with its own letter, another person said. The FTC's letter was previously reported by the Wall Street Journal, end quote. The FTC is suing Match Group, alleging that Match.com connected daters with accounts known to be fake, thereby, allegedly, duplicitously ginning up half a million new subscribers. See, that would be the most obvious shady way to get people to sign up to a dating site, right? You flood your system with a bunch of accounts of hot-looking people and then make it seem like those hotties have shown an interest in folks. Well, that's almost exactly what the FTC alleges match was up to.

Quote, the case hints at the murky line between genuinely helpful notifications and those that prey on people's curiosity to monetize a service. Non-paying Match.com users cannot view or respond to messages they receive on the service, but whenever they receive one, Match.com emails them to let them know, encouraging them to subscribe to see the message. The FTC claims that in hundreds of thousands of instances, Match.com notified daters of messages even after the company detected that the account sending the message was fraudulent. Once these people subscribed, they opened the message to see that the user had already been banned or days later would be banned for on-platform fraud, the lawsuit says. When these users then complained to Match.com or tried to get their money back, Match.com denied any wrongdoing, end quote.

I guess the only way you could take this further, into shadiness is if you had bots or actually paid people to pretend to be the hotties on the other end, to string folks along and then ghost them. That's not what is alleged here. But Vinnie Lingam, who is CEO of Civic Key, tweeted this, quote, this is not just Match.com. It's the entire industry. I've spoken to people across the industry and the problem is endemic, yet embraced. I've been personally told by former execs of various dating sites that, quote, fake accounts drive revenues and engagement, end quote. I did want to pick up some of the pieces that fell through the cracks yesterday in terms of Amazon's epic hardware event. I did not, for example,

get to mention the $25 Echo Flex, an Echo Smart Plug with modular accessories like a motion sensor and nightlight, quoting the verge. It's a tiny speaker that you plug directly into a wall outlet so you can get Alexa in every room of your house more easily. Amazon has built a full-sized USB B port into the bottom of the $24.99.0.99 Xx. So you can use it by your nightstand and still charge your phone or even plug additional accessories into the EchoFlex. Amazon is announcing two EchoFlex accessories that you'll be able to slot into the bottom, a motion sensor and a nightlight. Both will be priced at $14.99. And since the flex is clearly modular, we'll likely see a lot more accessories in the future. Amazon is even building an API for software developers and will share

the specs for accessories in the future so others can build for the future. flex. The first accessories are made by a company called Third Reality, end quote. Also, I miss telling you about something that Amazon is calling the Certified for Humans program for simple to use devices that are able to be set up and controlled right within the Alexa app, quoting CNET. Amazon wants your smart home to be simpler. Building off of the frustration-free setup announced last year, the company announced the Certified for Humans program at its Amazon hardware event in Seattle on Wednesday. The program is aimed at connected lights, plugs, and small appliances. The idea is that devices with this certification will be simple to set up and simple to use.

If you're building a smart home around an Amazon device like the new Amazon Echo Studio smart speaker, you'll be able to quickly identify which gadgets fit in easily through this certification. Amazon tested each device with a committee of people who were specifically not tech experts. To achieve the certification, devices need to use frustration-free setup. This allows Alexa to share your Wi-Fi credentials, so you don't have to re-enter the info. The device needs to allow over-the-air updates to happen in the background. Finally, you need to be able to set up and control the devices within the Alexa app, end quote.

And finally, the best rundown of the absolute deluge of announcements from Amazon yesterday. What it means in the larger scheme of things came from Owen Williams in his newsletter this morning. I'm going to quote quite liberally. This is a staggering list of products for a single company, to ship and shows just how serious Amazon is about winning the race for the smart home. It's flooding the market with ideas, while the competition flounders. In all of 2019, Google has shipped the Nest Hub Max. I'd wager a bet that at least half of these products fade into obscurity within the year. But that's sort of the point. Amazon is betting it can find the standout hit by trying it all. To date, this strategy seems to be working with the company grabbing 70% of the smart assistant market share in the U.S. If Alexa is everywhere, will anyone be able to ignore the company at all? The plan is clear. Alexa is the operating system for the physical world, and so far it's the only company really in the game in a meaningful way. Let's be honest. Nobody needs half of this crap, but that's not the point at all. Cramming Alexa into all of these things is a demonstration of the company's ability to ship, iterate, and quickly determine what will blow up on the platform, end quote. Finally today, let's do an interesting raise Thursday segment. Divi is a startup which buys and rents homes while setting aside around 25% of monthly payments

towards the renter's future down payment for the very house they're renting. Divi has just raised a $43 million series B from returning investors, Andreessen Horowitz, caffeinated capital, Max Levchen, and among the new investors is the home builder, Lenar, quoting CrunchBase News. Divi differentiates itself from the slew of real estate tech companies claiming to be digitizing the archaic data-heavy process buyers encounter along the way by taking things further. The company works with renters who want to become homeowners by buying the home they want and renting it back to them for three years, quote, while they build the savings needed to own it themselves, end quote. Every company has a mission. Divi claims to be working to create a world where

every person can own their forever home, or essentially it wants to make home ownership more accessible. Buying a home with Divi starts with a five-minute application that results in an approved home buying budget and an introduction to a real estate agent. Once found, Divi purchases the property while the renter contributes an initial 2% of the home value. About 25% of each subsequent rent payment goes toward saving for a traditional mortgage so the new residents have a down payment to buy their home in the three years. If the runners change their mind, they can just get cashed out for their savings, or if they want to buy it faster, they can speed up the process. The company claims to have helped customers save, on average, more than $5,000 per household, end quote. Since Divi currently

only operates in the Atlanta, Cleveland, and Memphis, Tennessee markets, one assumes this money will be deployed to expand Divi to new markets. It's been a while since I've mentioned this, But did you know, the Techmeme Right Home has a sister show. It's called the Election Ride Home. If you're into politics at all and you've never checked out the election right home before, please do so. Our good friend. And sometimes co-host Chris Higgins does some amazing work over there. It's political news, yes, but not even remotely like the sort of political coverage you've gotten used to over the last few years.

I'm not going to say that it's fair and balanced. let's call it reasonable and thoughtful, which again is pretty much unlike any other politics coverage out there. If you like the format of this show, you'll get what I'm saying when you listen to what Chris does. Anyway, check it out. Election Ride Home on your podcast app of choice.