If you have a car and want to make a quick buck while driving home from work, you're in luck: Uber has now made it possible with a new app feature that matches riders with drivers that are heading the same way.

Named the "destinations" feature, the app uses an algorithm that susses out drivers that are heading where the user is trying to go; users can click on a clipboard icon at the top corner of their phone screen, input their desired address, and the app will display requests that appear along the journey. Freelance drivers can choose to pick up customers en route, and riders can get a lift, thereby streamlining helpful options and quickening the entire pick-up process.

In short, everyone seems to win. Or do they?

As The Verge points out, Uber reports that more than 60 percent of its employee base works part-time, but even so, the fact that the app gives anyone the potential to become an Uber driver for an hour on their way home from work still takes business away from actual, contractual Uber drivers. (Or, as the Verge put it, "if you never have to deviate from your route, suddenly anyone has the potential to be an Uber driver, regardless of employment status").

Uber isn't the first service to come up with the DIY-driver/carpooling model: a representative at Lyft e-mailed Tech Times with a note that pointed out the ridesharing Uber competitor launched a similar feature "about a year ago," which is currently available in Los Angeles, Austin, Boston, Washington, D.C., New York, and San Francisco, the location of Uber's beta-testing "destinations" site. Lyft also marketed their own feature heavily as a commuter-related service -- a perk which Uber included in their feature-related press release a year later.

Either way, Uber senior project manager Maya Choski concludes that the changes Uber has implemented over the past few weeks, including the "destinations" feature, are being done in part to equalize accessibility for all Uber users worldwide.

"All the conventions that we think about ... we can't take those as a given," said Choski. "We have to think about: it's this person, say they can't read at all, and they've never used a smartphone. How do we create something that's so simple and intuitive that they'll know exactly where to tap to find the information they want?"

Right now, the app feature is only available in the Bay Area in beta version—a litmus test to prove its utility—and will spread to other cities if it proves to be successful.





Via: The Verge

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