Experiences That Moved Us in 2015

It’s been a busy year and it’s been great to see how far the Uber API and developer community has come. Before 2015 quickly comes to a close, we wanted to take a moment and look back and reflect on all of the amazing things we’ve accomplished together.

The goal of the Uber API is to empower you, the developer community, to build moving experiences. And you’ve done just that. Last week we announced an integration with Facebook Messenger, giving users the ability to request, manage and share their Uber experience all without having to download the Uber app.

We knew the potential for the API was vast but we have been blown away by the creativity and ambition of the developer community. Here are some of the other highlights from this year…

We expected at launch that the API would be transformational when thoughtfully utilized by mapping partners like Baidu Maps, Google Maps, MapQuest, or by transit partners like Transit App and Citymapper to ease transportation access. To our delight, however, and thanks to the ingenuity of our partner ecosystem, that has proven to be just the tip of the iceberg.

We’ve also seen implementations that have changed the way that individuals engage with their friends, family and hobbies when leveraged by guides and events like Foursquare, Zomato, YumTable, Evite and StubHub. In addition, integrations such as Hilton, United, and TripAdvisor, have improved how people plan and experience business or personal travel.

It’s perhaps no surprise that the API has also become a key part of the user experience among the leading wearables and assistants that people rely on as their copilot throughout the day. Uber is a tap or spoken word away in the Pebble and with Cortana.

These integrations are just a few examples of how developers have used the API to enrich their apps and allow their users to easily get moving in style with just a couple of taps.

We’ve also been proud to support Hackathons across the world — as far as Lagos, Nigeria and Helsinki, Finland, on the beautiful beaches of Hawaii and, of course, in our backyard at Outside Hacks. We even hosted a virtual event on the interwebs through DevPost.

The level of ingenuity that has come out of these hackathons has been impressive, and we continue to see more of that same originality and innovation every day. Thanks to these efforts you can now Teleport your friends directly to you, get your friends to dinner with Rally, and order a ride right from your enterprise chat room with Hipchat.

Thanks to our partnerships with coding academies across the nation including Hack Reactor — Remote Beta, Code Fellows, MakerSquare, Coding Dojo and our Developer Ambassador program in conjunction with HackingEDU, we look forward to continuing and expanding our support of next generation of developers in 2016.

Of course, we continue to evolve our suite of features and developer tools based on your feedback. The Product, Developer Relations, and Core Engineering teams work in close coordination to ensure that we’re building stuff you’ll love!

This year we released the Ride Request API; the centerpiece of the Uber API so far. With it, you can order rides seamlessly within your app, service of device. We also released Webhooks for easy tracking of trip state, Ride Reminders to set ‘future intent’ for rides (announced on stage by Satya Nadella at Build 2015), and even launched in China with dedicated developer support!

We also made it easier to fulfill the core ‘Intent to Ride’ use-case with the Ride Request button and SDKs so integrating Uber is easy and seamless.

As part of all these new features and apps, we wanted to make sure developers have a way to make money and build a business. So we also turned on Cash Rewards for our Affiliate Program.

Of course, this is all just the beginning. As you’ve seen; our pace of partnerships, iteration and big new features has been increasing. We’re growing the team and we’re investing heavily in all aspects of the API to make sure that it’s easy to get onboard, build your app, ship and make a meaningful impact on your business and the lives of users around the world.

We can’t wait to show you what we’ve got cooking up for next year as our team continues to add functionality, provide support, address feedback and work with you to build more meaningful moving experiences.

Thanks for making 2015 a great one and see you next year!

Cheers!
Uber Developer Platform Team

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