TaskRabbit, a site that connects people looking to outsource tasks such as household repairs and keg deliveries, recently announced that its business model will be changing from one that resembles an eBay-style auction house to one that more closely resembles companies like Uber. The new TaskRabbit will be launched “before the end of July.”
As Casey Newton noted at The Verge last week in an article titled “TaskRabbit is blowing up its business model and becoming the Uber for everything,” when the new system goes live next month users will find a landing page that steers them to the platform’s four most popular types of service: handyman, house cleaning, moving, and personal assistants. (You can still request other services, though it takes a few more clicks.) After you submit some details about the job, TaskRabbit will present three contractors, along with their hourly rates, who represent a range of prices and experience levels. After you select one, you can schedule a time for the job and communicate with the “Tasker” in real time using a custom messaging platform built by the company.
It seems that news of TaskRabbit’s makeover has increased interest in the company. TaskRabbit PR chief Johnny Brackett tweeted on Wednesday, the day after TaskRabbit announced the planned changes, that TaskRabbit had “15X more user signups yesterday than an average day.”
While Uber’s rideshare service, UberX, makes it simple for users to do one familiar thing (catching a ride), TaskRabbit allows for its users to easily find help carrying out a range of common tasks such as assembling furniture, replacing light switches, and so-called “virtual” tasks such as vacation planning and proofreading.
It remains to be seen if TaskRabbit’s redesign will yield the sort of growth enjoyed by other “sharing economy” companies. If Brackett’s tweet is accurate, there is at the very least some new interest in TaskRabbit, the “Uber for everything.” Investors have shown that they believe in the potential of the “sharing economy” despite numerous domestic and international regulatory battles, having provided Uber and Airbnb with huge valuations earlier this year.
If the new version of TaskRabbit takes off, it will likely have to contend with its own share of regulatory obstacles. In particular, many of the jobs that it helps people to get done could be subject to state and local occupational licensing rules. Established service providers may try to use these laws to squelch unlicensed competition from TaskRabbit, just as taxi services have sought to stop Uber.
It will be interesting to see how TaskRabbit does with its Uber-like system. I was quite eager to use TaskRabbit myself, but after signing up as a TaskRabbit (a term that will be changed to “Tasker” once the new site is launched) in Washington, D.C. I received a message that said in part:
There is high application volume in your city right now so we’ve temporarily put a hold on all new applications. The number of tasks on our site is growing rapidly, so it shouldn’t be long before we start accepting new applications.
So, it doesn’t look like I’ll be helping strangers out with IKEA furniture assembly via TaskRabbit any time soon, but that seems to be because of the popularity of the “Uber for everything,” which shouldn’t come as a surprise.
