From FastCompany:
If you’re not a techie, you may not have come across the term
“walled garden” before. But it’s a critical concept these days in
technology business strategy–and it has the potential to fundamentally
change the ways we travel throughout cities.
In
essence, a walled garden is a closed technology platform that limits
the information and options available to a user. If you have an Apple
product, the concept will be familiar: In order to download a new app to
your iPhone, you must go to Apple’s App Store. Apple “curates” the apps
you can get in the App Store, bringing some to your immediate attention
while forcing you to search for others. Apple also decides whether or
not a new app will be made available to you and the 500 million other people who visit the App Store every week. That gives Apple a lot of power, which can cause consternation or controversy when an app is rejected.
You
can find walled gardens in products ranging from e-readers (Amazon
Kindle) to social media (Facebook) to various video game consoles. For
the first time, the walled garden strategy is now being applied to urban
transportation, with ride-hail giants Uber and Lyft racing to add new
mobility modes to their apps. In 2018, Uber has announced partnerships
or acquisitions related to car sharing (Getaround), e-bike sharing (Jump), e-scooter share (Lime), and public transportation (Masabi). For its part, Lyft acquired public bike share operator Motivate, launched its own e-scooter share service, and has started building new integrations with public transportation into its app. The stakes are high; both companies–as well as China’s Didi Chuxing–want to evolve into walled gardens by providing trip planning and ticketing for any urban trip a commuter might desire.
This is a sensible move for the companies, as they can protect themselves from the risk that modes like e-scooters and e-bikes cannibalize their core ride-hail service.
Better yet, they could attract new users to their core ride-hail
services. If you currently use the app of a public bike-share system in
Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Portland, or Columbus—all of which
are operated by Motivate, recently acquired by Lyft—odds are high you’ll
soon see integrations with the Lyft app (there is almost no chance
you’ll see such integrations with Uber)....MUCH MORE
