Response to Jesse’s Inquiry

Applications are a great way to reach a wider audience. On the whole, I think Jesse hit the nail on the head by asking the defining question, ‘ Does linking up to social network applications in all likelihood increase the net population of users and therefore the effectiveness of the platform?’ The short answer, in my opinion, is yes. But the why is less obvious. Certainly, the more people one can reach, especially if they are centrally located in one space, such as on Facebook, would make communication to those users and among those users simple to execute and efficient. But what an application also does effectively is speed up the actual user flow. The process (time) of creating a ride would most likely be improved when working in a vacuum of sorts, as opposed to when someone accesses the platform using the world wide web. That web user may or may not be part of a social network that is recognized by other users and thus would require more steps to identify him/her so that an appropriate match can be made. What an application can also do is allow users of a certain network a way to pass along the entire platform to other people in their network, doing so in a way that already takes into account certain preferences, in effect passing along a tailored version of the platform to other like minded individuals. So the answer to your question, Jesse, is yes we are looking to build applications that are FB, MySpace and Twitter friendly but we have to finish tackling our other application strategy, which is to complete our iPhone, Blackberry and Android specific apps first. The completion of these apps will increase our reach and the efficiency with which users can connect to each other. However, bare in mind that applications, once they are created, are inherently limiting in their ability to adapt to changes in the environment and thus we will continue to focus on making sure our central command center, Cabcorner.com, stays ahead of the curve by addressing the needs of our users in the most comprehensive ways that technology affords us.