Carpooling has been a standard transportation choice for the commute between Berkeley and San Francisco for about 30 years. Every weekday morning, two lines form before the entrance to bridge — one for cars whose single occupants are hoping to bypass traffic in the carpool lane and the other for commuters who decided to skip the train. Locals have dubbed the teamwork “casual carpools.”
Zimride wants to similarly standardize carpooling as a transportation choice everywhere.
The company started in 2007 with a carpooling network for college campuses. Since then, it has provided an easy way for students to find rides home or to pay for gas by selling extra seats, and about 100 campuses have signed up to create their own networks. It has also added networks for corporations and allowed unaffiliated drivers and riders to participate using Facebook Connect.
Now that Zimride has hundreds of thousands of users participating through campuses and corporations, it’s ready to push its marketplace for ride sharing into the mainstream.
“If you look back at other forms of transportation … there’s always that idea of networks and the idea of routes,” Zimride co-founder John Zimmer says. “So we feel that this is the natural way to move toward a ubiquitous form of transportation where anyone anywhere can say, ‘How am I going to get to L.A. this weekend? I could take a Southwest flight, I could take the bus, or I could Zimride.’ We want that new transportation verb, Zimride, to be available to everyone, everywhere.”
The company has set up what it calls monthly “sponsored routes” in order to encourage new unaffiliated users. In August, for instance, the sponsored route is between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Drivers who sell seats for the ride at a price that they name will receive a $20 bonus from Zimride.
Riders can now also pay for seats in advance where before the exchange happened in person. Drivers still need to accept riders in order for them to book the seats, but this gives them an extra assurance that they’ll actually be paid for the trip.
There’s no way to book a ride on Zimride without connecting your Facebook profile, which makes anonymity less of an issue than on something like Craigslist. But haven’t our mothers always told us not to accept rides from strangers?
“With the Facebook profile, with the feedback we get, with the network idea where you can see where somebody went to school or where they work, there’s a lot more information,” Zimmer says. “With over 110 networks and a couple hundred thousand users, we haven’t had any issues.”
Whether that’s enough assurance to launch Zimride to verb status is yet to be seen. But if “couchsurfing” can do it, we can’t really rule anything out.
The first 100 Mashable readers who book a ride and send an email to [email protected] will receive a $20 credit to their accounts.
Photo courtesy of istockphoto, thanialex
More About: carpooling, transportation, ZimrideFor more Startups coverage:Follow Mashable Startups on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Startups channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Posted on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:59:30 +0000 at http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/ig_fMcJkXGs/
Comments: http://mashable.com/2011/08/17/zimride-carpooling/#comments
Zimride wants to similarly standardize carpooling as a transportation choice everywhere.
The company started in 2007 with a carpooling network for college campuses. Since then, it has provided an easy way for students to find rides home or to pay for gas by selling extra seats, and about 100 campuses have signed up to create their own networks. It has also added networks for corporations and allowed unaffiliated drivers and riders to participate using Facebook Connect.
Now that Zimride has hundreds of thousands of users participating through campuses and corporations, it’s ready to push its marketplace for ride sharing into the mainstream.
“If you look back at other forms of transportation … there’s always that idea of networks and the idea of routes,” Zimride co-founder John Zimmer says. “So we feel that this is the natural way to move toward a ubiquitous form of transportation where anyone anywhere can say, ‘How am I going to get to L.A. this weekend? I could take a Southwest flight, I could take the bus, or I could Zimride.’ We want that new transportation verb, Zimride, to be available to everyone, everywhere.”
The company has set up what it calls monthly “sponsored routes” in order to encourage new unaffiliated users. In August, for instance, the sponsored route is between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Drivers who sell seats for the ride at a price that they name will receive a $20 bonus from Zimride.
Riders can now also pay for seats in advance where before the exchange happened in person. Drivers still need to accept riders in order for them to book the seats, but this gives them an extra assurance that they’ll actually be paid for the trip.
There’s no way to book a ride on Zimride without connecting your Facebook profile, which makes anonymity less of an issue than on something like Craigslist. But haven’t our mothers always told us not to accept rides from strangers?
“With the Facebook profile, with the feedback we get, with the network idea where you can see where somebody went to school or where they work, there’s a lot more information,” Zimmer says. “With over 110 networks and a couple hundred thousand users, we haven’t had any issues.”
Whether that’s enough assurance to launch Zimride to verb status is yet to be seen. But if “couchsurfing” can do it, we can’t really rule anything out.
The first 100 Mashable readers who book a ride and send an email to [email protected] will receive a $20 credit to their accounts.
Photo courtesy of istockphoto, thanialex
More About: carpooling, transportation, ZimrideFor more Startups coverage:Follow Mashable Startups on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Startups channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Posted on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:59:30 +0000 at http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/ig_fMcJkXGs/
Comments: http://mashable.com/2011/08/17/zimride-carpooling/#comments
