{"id":1363,"date":"2014-11-29T20:32:09","date_gmt":"2014-11-30T03:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sebersole.wordpress.com\/?p=1363"},"modified":"2014-11-29T20:32:09","modified_gmt":"2014-11-30T03:32:09","slug":"ubers-image-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/ubers-image-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Uber’s Image Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Uber\"<\/a>Perhaps you’ve\u00a0heard of Uber, the smartphone-enabled ride-sharing alternative to traditional taxis. Uber, along with Lyft and Sidecar, work on the premise that a person with a car can offer a service to someone who need a ride, and make a few bucks in the process for both the driver and the company. Now that most everyone has a smartphone–and with real-time location services knowing your every move–connecting drivers and riders is really pretty simple.<\/p>\n

But Uber, like the other start-ups, has a few natural enemies. Taxi cab companies don’t like\u00a0having their business syphoned off by competitors who are not\u00a0licensed\u00a0and have little to no overhead.<\/p>\n

But it is Uber’s\u00a0CEO and a senior VP who may become\u00a0the company’s greatest liability. CEO Travis Kalanick, whose aggressive leadership has been credited with the quick rise of the company, has ruffled more than a few feathers with his aggressive business practices. Uber has been accused of violating its own privacy policy and tracking users for suspect reasons. (You can read more about that on the ACLU blog<\/a>.) And\u00a0recently, Uber VP Emil Michael has suggested that Uber should investigate\u00a0journalists who have been investigating Uber.<\/p>\n

Specifically Michael targeted Sarah Lacy, co-editor of the Pando Daily website. Lacy has been critical of Uber’s treatment of women and has been leading the call for Uber to clean up its act. And for that, according to The Tech Bulletin<\/a>, “A top executive of Uber explained a Nixonian plan to dig up dirt on the journalists who are critical towards Uber and sully their reputations.”<\/p>\n

One doesn’t have to be a PR pro to see that this is not a smart move by Uber.\u00a0Picking a fight with journalists is seldom a good idea. As Bill Greener, press aide to Gerald Ford and Donald Rumsfeld in the 1970’s once said, “Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel” (Lewis<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps you’ve\u00a0heard of Uber, the smartphone-enabled ride-sharing alternative to traditional taxis. Uber, along with Lyft and Sidecar, work on the premise that a person with a car can offer a service to someone who need a ride, and make a few bucks in the process for both the driver and the company. Now that most … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Uber’s Image Problem”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10,11,16,19,22,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising","category-interactive-media","category-journalism","category-new-media","category-pr","category-regulation","category-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}