Un-FARE! Uber Downloads Rise 850% As A Result of Taxi Protests
Black cab and licensed taxi drivers protest at Trafalgar Square, London over the introduction of a phone app called Uber which allows customers to book and track vehicles.
THIS is just lovely: as a result of the taxi protests about how awful Uber is in stealing the crusts from the mouths of the poor babbies of taxi drivers there’s been a surge of interest in Uber itself. To the point that downloads of the app rose 850% over the same day a week earlier. This isn’t what those cab drivers were hoping would happen. Well, not unless they’re even more stupid than we already think they are.
Up to 10,000 taxi drivers brought gridlock to central London on Wednesday as they protested against Uber, the mobile application that has become popular in cities across Europe.
The protests are estimated to have caused an estimated £125 million in lost revenue.
But Uber reported a massive spike in downloads of their mobile application on Wednesday.
Jo Bertram, the app’s UK and Ireland general manager, said it had seen its biggest day of sign ups since it launched in London two years ago – an 850 per cent increase in downloads compared to last Wednesday.
This is what is known as the Streisand Effect. Some years back Barbra Streisand complained that someone had taken an aerial photo of her house and stuck it on the internet. This led to millions of people finding out, because she had complained, that the photo existed and thus they all went and looked at it. Which really isn’t what she wanted to happen.
A demonstrator carries a mock coffin with a message reading ‘They want to kill us – Uber’ during a 24 hour taxi strike and protest in Madrid, Spain, Wednesday, June 11, 2014.
The same thing seems to be happening here. So, people were asking themselves, WTF is going on with all these cabs protesting about something? Uber? Never heard of it, what is it? An app you say? Great, I’ll go download it then.
The lesson being that if most people don’t know about whatever it is that you don’t want them to be doing then protesting about it might not be a good idea. For that way loads of people are going to find out about this thing that you don’t want them to be doing. Keep shtum instead.
Posted: 12th, June 2014 | In: Money, The Consumer Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
