Some Morgan Stanley Analysts Visited Ford, GM And Chrysler — And Concluded Uber Is Going To Change Everything (F, GM, FCAU) | ||
| | ||
A team of Morgan Stanley analysts flew to Detroit recently to take meetings with the investor relations staff of the Big 3 car companies, and came away believing that Uber was about to transform everything. "The highlight of our trip, however, was the 3 Uber trips we took between meetings," the note says. We haven't seen such a glowing note to investors in a long time. Taxis and car rental companies are going to die, the Morgan Stanley team suspects: Now that Morgan Stanley allows employees to submit Uber and UberX journeys as reimbursable expenses, we may never use a traditional car service or rent-a-car again unless absolutely necessary. That sentence was bolded in the note, so that readers don't miss it. What seems to have happened is that Adam Jonas, Ravi Shanker, Paresh Jain, and Neel Mehta decided to use Uber in Detroit instead of regular taxis. Instantly, they noticed that taking Uber from the airport and around Michigan was about half the price of regular taxi service. They also really liked their drivers, whom they profiled briefly in the note. It sounds like the team had a good time "Rollin' in the 'D'" (yes, that's the title of the note): Our champagne-colored 2005 Toyota Camry pulled up in front of PF Chang's to take us to the heart of downtown Detroit to GM's headquarters in the Renaissance Center. PF Chang's! Anyway, the point is that all three Uber drivers they encountered told them a similar story: Uber was the only job they could take that offered them enough flexibility to handle their other commitments. Regular jobs — with their rigid schedules — made it impossible for the drivers to take care of their kids, attend class, and renovate a house, respectively. Because Uber allows these people to earn wages they can't normally, the team believe it may unlock some economic growth that is suppressed by more traditional jobs: ... there may be even deeper implications for how people move around, live and work. ... Our journey through Southeast Michigan further opened our eyes to the birth of a shared economy in a region starving for growth and opportunity. At Business Insider, we're familiar with these sudden road-to-Damascus conversions in favour of Uber. We had one ourselves earlier this year. Uber isn't just a car-ride service. What makes it huge, and justifies its astonishing $17 billion valuation is a company, is that it's basically a geographic supply-and-demand matching engine that guarantees a level of trust between strangers (because both driver and passenger can get the real identity of the othert party, and both parties can rate and ultimately exclude the others from the system for bad behavior.) It's not just about cars, in other words. Uber's software could be used for any transaction involving the physical exchange of goods or services between strangers who need to trust each other. To underscore the impression Uber left on them, the Morgan Stanley team referenced the fact that the folks at Ford also believe Uber is going to change everything: In a recent presentation, Ford Motor Company said that alternative mobility/car sharing/ride sharing is the single most disruptive trend to the automotive business model. We agree. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
| |
Russia Is Launching Its Own Version Of Wikipedia | ||
| | ||
Russia is planning to launch its own version of Wikipedia to correct what it sees as errors about the country on the crowd-sourced encyclopedia. An article on the country's Presidential Library website says Wikipedia has demonstrated an inability "to detail and reliably inform" its users about Russia. This wouldn't be the first time that the Russian state has stepped in where it sees information that it disagrees with being distributed. In 2005 state-owned Ria Novosti launched news channel Russia Today to provide a "Russian approach to...news". On Monday the channel was threatened with statutory sanctions by UK media regulator Ofcom after it was found to have breached impartiality rules for broadcasters for the third time. In conjunction with the National Library of Russia, the Presidential Library plans to launch a digital resource to provide "objective and accurate" information on the country to citizens. It will reportedly provide access to more than 50,000 books and archival documents from libraries across the country's 27 regions. It plans to showcase "the country and its population, the diversity of the state and the national system of Russia" and, like Wikipedia, it will be constantly updated with new information as it becomes available. However, there were no details as to whether users will be able to edit or submit information to the site — the basis of the Wikipedia model. Although this does pose problems for accuracy, it also allows for contributions from a wide range of sources giving it a breadth and depth of information that early competitors following a more traditional top-down model failed to keep pace with. It also limits the scope for spreading deliberate misinformation, as users can report submissions that they believe to be inaccurate to Wikipedia's editors. As the Wikipedia's About Us section explains: "People of all ages, cultures and backgrounds can add or edit article prose, references, images and other media here. What is contributed is more important than the expertise or qualifications of the contributor. What will remain depends upon whether the content is free of copyright restrictions and contentious material about living people, and whether it fits within Wikipedia's policies, including being verifiable against a published reliable source, thereby excluding editors' opinions and beliefs and unreviewed research." The Presidential Library is already confident of success, claiming the new site will be "one of the most popular Russian internet resources". Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
| |
