Uber’s API Launch Lights The Way For Sharing Economy Apps

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Convincing users to join in new collaborative consumption ventures can be a tall order, but Uber’s API launch today gives us a glimpse of how others building businesses along similar lines might be able to juice usage and find a lasting place in the virtual toolboxes of smartphone owners.

The fact is that most of the so-called sharing economy apps offer services that complement other apps and services, either in the same vein or in drastically different fields. Uber, for instance, has teamed up with OpenTable, Starbucks and United among its launch partners, as well as Hinge, which marries the hook-up app concept with the means of getting the two parties together.

It’s the proverbial match made in heaven, and there’s a lot more matchmaking to be done. Postmates, for instance, would benefit greatly from allowing businesses to build its service directly into their apps, offering delivery options where none existed before. Airbnb is gearing up to launch a developer partner platform, too, which would make it possible (for select companies at first) to build its rental platform directly into their software, which of course would be perfect for travel and tourism software.

The fact is that most of these collaborative consumption apps make much more sense as a service layer available to other app developers than as standalone businesses. In fact, you could even go so far as to say that on-demand services are the next notifications for mobile – they began as a standalone business provided by startups like Boxcar, but eventually companies cropped up that offered easy SDKs to build that functionality into any developer’s app, essentially turning the whole thing into a background service that users come to expect of any app they download.

Of course, there’s a lot more to a sharing economy app than there is to a notification layer, mobile payments gateway or in-app purchase system, which are just a few of the development components now being offered on a SaaS basis. But the natural fit between Uber and its new partners suggest there’s a lot of merit in the idea of shared real-world services providers for mobile apps – delivery, transport, accommodation, etc. are after all, just other things that it would benefit businesses to have, but that are prohibitively expensive to develop and maintain on their own.

Hailo Launches API For E-Hailing On The Same Day As Uber

Not to be left behind in the growing feud between Uber, Lyft, Sidecar and others, Hailo has launched a public API for its taxi hailing service, on the very same day Uber announced its own. The startup, which launched in 2011 in London but has since expanded to various cities across the UK, London and Canada, originally dealt in standard taxis vs. Uber’s black car focus, but has since also moved into black car, SUV and sedan transportation.

The publicly accessible API follows an initial launch integration with third-party transit planning app Citymapper last month. The Citymapper integration worked similarly to how Uber now offers an in-app link to its own services in Google Maps, but didn’t require actually leaving the app to work. Uber’s new API means that it now can and does offer this kind of instant car booking in various third-party apps, too.

Hailo’s public API isn’t surprising, since the Citymapper venture was likely a test all along with an end goal of launching something public if it worked out. Uber’s debut of its own API likely hurried the launch timeline, for fear it get left behind as the two duke it out for high profile app partners: Though in theory there’s nothing preventing developers from including both options, it might confuse users more than help them. If you’re a dev interested in Hailo’s API, the company suggests you email them at api@hailocab.com for now to get started.

The news from Hailo today only serves to reinforce my thesis from earlier, at any rate –APIs from sharing economy startups are about to explode, and before long, you’ll be able to get just about anything on-demand from any app where it makes sense, and probably a few where it doesn’t, too.