Do you want to know what created the latest buzz in crowdsourcing this week? Here’s a curated weekly roundup of the breaking news and must-read thought leadership pieces on the crowd economy. Uber is making some headlines this week as it celebrates its 5th anniversary, meanwhile, the 6-year-old startup Foursquare announced its partnership with the company. There are also thought leadership pieces on smart cities, government, sharing economy and among others.
Foursquare partners with Uber so users can order rides within the app
Local search and discovery app Foursquare announced on Monday its partnership with Uber where users can now order rides to their destinations they find within the app according to the Forbes. Foursquare users will see the Uber button, which automatically loads the local address into the Uber app—this feature was made possible through deep-linking partner Button.
What makes up an ideal city?
How can we measure the health of the city? You don’t need an instrument to do it. Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga said, “you can measure the health of a city by whether its wealthy citizens use public transit.” This interesting thought piece on the Forbes is an eye-opener of what should comprised of an advanced city, “one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport. Or bicycles,” and what should policymakers at the federal level can do in order to build a “well-planned, technologically-advanced, data-driven city.”
Bitcoin + Government = a good equation?
When it comes to digital currencies, you can’t help governments but to snoop around and meddle along the way. However, M.I.T. Media Lab director Joi Ito said there’s a way (actually, two ways) on how to keep governments from overregulating the Bitcoin. He said governments need to be included, “to actually give it a voice in the development process,” as ITWorld puts it. And the other one is to give importance to privacy when dealing with digital currencies in which he suggested that the lack of privacy is a caveat of Bitcoin.
How should the Parliament respond to a disruptive idea?
People across the NSW state are embracing in the sharing economy but on the flipside, the parliament is still continuing fining the UberX drivers. “Services like AirBnB, Roomz, Stayz, Uber, and MamaBake have won sizeable market share. And they are doing it not by offering a product, but by offering a connection,” Daniel Mookhey wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald. There are only options on how the parliament should respond according to Mookhey, either embrace and harness or try and hold back the tide.
Happy 5th year anniversary, Uber! And here is the to-do-list for the next 5 years
Uber celebrated its 5th anniversary this week and despite the regulatory scuffles, the company continues to expand globally. But how long the “King of the Hill” shall last? An analysis by Mashable suggests that Uber needs to do 3 things over the next five years in three bullets: Uber vs. the world (should face legal and regulatory scuffles), Uber vs. Wall Street (go public), and Uber vs. Asia (should watch out on expansion strategies in growing online markets like China, India, and Latin Americas because these regions are already dominated by local players).
Sharing economy has created 17 billion dollar companies and “10 unicorns”
Check out the companies that were birthed from sharing economy (of course, Uber is in); Jeremiah Owyang and VB Profiles said “There are now 17 billion-dollar companies with 60,000 employees and $15 billion in funding in the sharing or collaborative economy,” Venture Beat reports. Among the 17 billion dollar companies, there are “10 unicorns” defined as private companies.
[Image credit via Deposit Photos]
There are tons of amazing stories out there. What else caught your eye this week? Did you come across some breaking news or a good thought piece?
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