Coronavirus is making the sharing economy a lot less appealing all of a sudden, and it's come home to roost at ridesharing giant Uber ($UBER), which has seen job postings tumble to multi-year lows as it grapples with both profitability and a pandemic.
Over the last 12 months, Uber has seen shares fall roughly 50%, as it went from white-hot IPO darling to an unprofitable app with little in the way of clarity around how it would make more money. And, we can track in the chart above, job postings recently plummeted to multi-year lows at Uber, as well.
What Uber does has going in its favor is that its Uber Eats platform is seeing consumers mention it in social media chatter, tracked above in our Facebook ($FB) Talking About Count, in record numbers.
It's unclear whether drivers will want to compete with the likes of Doordash and Postmates once the Coronavirus crisis has been curtailed, by a combination of medication, treatment, and shelter-in-place. But, for now, at a time when many digital upstarts are facing challenges not just to profitability - but to viability - Uber seems to have an ace up its sleeve that other ridesharing competitors, like Lyft, lack.
And on top of that, it's maintaining the ability to stay relevant with consumers at a critical time, when other brands are being left to the wayside.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.
