Uber Pushes Back Against California Driver Lawsuit

Uber Pushes Back Against California Driver Lawsuit

Uber argued on Thursday that a lawsuit filed by drivers should not proceed as a class action with the ride service citing statements of support from hundreds of other Uber drivers in a case that could decide whether they are independent contractors or employees.

Three drivers sued Uber in San Francisco federal court, contending they are employees and entitled to reimbursement for expenses, including gas and vehicle maintenance. The drivers pay those costs themselves. If allowed to proceed as a class action, the lawsuit could cover more than 160,000 California drivers.

The results of this broader legal battle could reshape the sharing economy, as companies say the contractor model allows for flexibility that many see as important to their success. An ultimate finding that drivers are employees could raise Uber's costs beyond the lawsuits' scope and force it to pay Social Security, workers' compensation, and unemployment insurance.

In court on Thursday, Uber in a filing cited written statements from more than 400 drivers supporting the company. At least two drivers said that if courts decided that they are Uber employees, they would not be able to work for multiple ride services.

Uber drivers "have little or nothing in common," the company argued, because they all differ significantly in the way that they engage with the company. Some hire subcontractors while others run their own transportation companies, and those differences make the case unmanageable to proceed as a single class action, the company said.

Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said it is "not surprising" or relevant that Uber received support from several hundred drivers. "More than a thousand drivers have contacted our firm who are very unhappy with how Uber has treated them," she said.

In previous court filings, the plaintiffs argued that Uber exercises enough control over its drivers, including the ability to terminate them, for them to be considered employees.

That legal similarity should be enough for the case to move forward as a class action, plaintiff attorneys said.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is Douglas O'Connor et al vs. Uber Technologies Inc, 13-3826.

(Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Grant McCool and Cynthia Osterman)

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5 Facts About Evan Spiegel, Snapchat's Often Controversial Co-Founder

5 Facts About Evan Spiegel, Snapchat's Often Controversial Co-Founder

At age 25, Evan Spiegel -- the co-founder and CEO of Snapchat -- is theworld's youngest billionaire. He’s also a divisive figure. Spiegel, whoseleaked college emails revealed a serious lack of maturity, has been an easy poster boy for the Silicon Valley tech scene – smart, confident, innovative, but embarrassingly 'bro'-like.

Regardless of one's personal opinion of Spiegel, it's undeniable that he struck a home-run with Snapchat. The app -- which, in the place of archived, chronicled posts a la Facebook, allows users to send messages that disappear shortly after being opened -- has come to heavily influence, if not define, the way young people communicate, making it integral to brands, advertisers and anyone else looking to capture the attention of millennials and Gen Z-ers.

With that in mind, here are five things to know about Snapchat's controversial CEO.

1. He grew up wealthy.

Raised in the ritzy Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles, the son of two Ivy League-educated attorneys, Spiegel enjoyed a cushy childhood, full of vacations, expensive cars and large monthly allowances, according to a lengthy profile in LA Weekly. After graduating from Crossroads, a private high-school in Santa Monica, Calif., Spiegel enrolled at Stanford, his father's alma mater, where he majored in product design.

If Spiegel is quick to acknowledge his privilege -- "I am a young, white, educated male
 who ‘got really, really lucky,’" he said at a Stanford Women in Business conference – he's also quick to point out that privilege isn't everything. To truly succeed, one must capitalize on it. "It's not about working harder; it's about working the system," he said.

At Stanford, he did just that, aggressively networking in order to meet influential people including Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and Intuit co-founder and then CEO Scott Cook, who set him up with a job at the tech company while he was still a student. 

2. He started Snapchat as a school project with a friend, Frank Reginald ‘Reggie’ Brown IV -- a relationship that soon soured.

Snapchat was initially conceived in response to a conversation among Spiegel's Stanford fraternity brothers about sexting, according to LA Weekly; together with frat brothers Frank Reginald Brown and Bobby Murphy, Spiegel launched Snapchat from his dorm room, later dropping out of Stanford a few credits short of graduating.

The app's conception would later become the basis of a lawsuit filed by Brown after he was forced out of Snapchat's founding team. Seeking a 20 percent stake in the company, Brown lawyered up, as did Spiegel, over Brown's claims that he was an instrumental part of Snapchat's creation, finally reaching an undisclosed settlement in September 2014.

3. He's owned up to his bad behavior.

In May 2014, the tech blog Valleywag published emails Spiegel had sent as an undergrad. Not only sexually explicit, the missives were repeatedly misogynistic and homophobic. While the content is indefensible, Spiegel was forced to defend himself nonetheless. Twenty-three years old at the time the emails were published, he set about trying to convince the world that he'd grown a lot since his (recent) fraternity days.

"I'm obviously mortified and embarrassed that my idiotic emails during my fraternity days were made public. I have no excuse," he wrote in an email to Business Insider. "I'm sorry I wrote them at the time and I was jerk to have written them. They in no way reflect who I am today or my views towards women."

4. He has a lot in common with Mark Zuckerberg.

Despite Spiegel and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg's history (Spiegel rejected Zuckerberg's offer to acquire Snapchat for $3 billion back in 2013), the two men have a lot in common. Both dropped out of a prestigious school (Harvard and Stanford, respectively) to start a social-networking company, both walked away from hefty acquisition offers (in Spiegel's case that offer came from Zuckerberg), both went to court with a co-founder and friend, and both publicly dealt with the steep learning curves of running a high-profile company while in their twenties.

5. He loves the party lifestyle.

Spiegel isn't shy about spending money in order to make a splash. His fascination and love for expensive cars ("cars bring me sheer joy," he wrote to his father in high school, explaining why he deserved to drive a $75,000 BMW) has been well-documented, as has his penchant forexpensive hoodies, private vacations, and lavish parties. Unlike Zuckerberg, while he may understand computers, he's no geek. Since Snapchat blew up, he's been romantically linked to ladies in Hollywood's upper echelon, including Taylor Swift and recently, model Miranda Kerr.

Unlike Zuckerberg, who appears to spend his free time reading books,learning Mandarin, and traveling with his wife, Spiegel has always been a partier. According to an LA Weekly profile, he threw large parties in high-school, a practice that continued on into college, where he was social chair of Stanford's Kappa Sigma fraternity

4 Steps to Attract Customer Photos for Your Brand's Social Campaigns

4 Steps to Attract Customer Photos for Your Brand's Social Campaigns

We’ve all heard the saying, “A photo is worth a thousand words.” But in today’s marketing landscape, a photo is also worth a thousand words of endorsement.

Brands were originally created because businesses needed to convey a specific product identity and distinguish themselves from similar products. It was important to build a trusted household name because consumers often bought based on brand and nothing else.

But in today’s hyper-connected world, a brand is no longer what it tells the consumer it is -- but what consumers tell one other it is. Everyday, two billion photos are posted online. This user-generated content is essential for successful outbound marketing and is a valuable way for companies to validate and build global communities around their brands. 

Getting customers to post on social media about your brand is a four-step process. It requires having a great product, being active on social media, making sure these photos are being shared and collected across channels and rewarding your brand advocates. Companies that successfully execute these steps will be able to drive sales through social media channels and offer shoppers a more engaging shopping experience. 

1. Have a great product.

Legendary ad man David Ogilvy once said, “Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster.” The only way to build a strong brand is to first create a great product. When you focus on customer experience and deliver a superior product at a great price, customers will project a brand upon you that is much stronger than any of your current marketing can create.

Still, a great brand name is earned, and it may take years to perfect your product. Once you have a great one, however, you’ll see high levels of customer recommendations, and your brand will further build itself. 

2. Be active on social media.

The most important step for getting customers to post about your brand is to create a two-way conversation between your brand and your customers. This means setting up your brand’s social profiles across social networks. A conversation is the only way to create a real dialogue with customers and to join the dialogue around your brand on social media.

A conservation also humanizes your company and generates brand affinity and loyalty. When customers see brands celebrating their fellow customers, through posts, and engaging with real people, through comments, your social presence will be validated. And at that point, your brand will likely be reaching a larger audience.

To take things a step further, you can run contests and campaigns to increase social media engagement even more. Photo and video contests give fans and customers a reason to submit great content and share it with their own social communities.

3. Spread the word.

If you have a great product, it’s likely that customers are already taking photos of your product and sharing it online. So the next step is to find a way to search for and collect this content to create a cohesive hashtag community.

First, make sure that your "evergreen" hashtag is prevalent. An evergreen hashtag represents your brand as a whole. More often than not, if you lack one, your customers have already created one for you. Make that hashtag -- wherever it's from -- a part of your content strategy on both social media and your own marketing and owned media.

Also put the hashtag on complimentary items and highlight it on your website. You want to make it easy for customers interacting with your brand to discover and join the conversation, with their own content. 

4. Reward your brand advocates.

If you reward your customers for posting about your brand, you will increase the likelihood of their posting again. Consumers love being recognized for how they use your products post-purchase.

Highlight the innovative ways people are using your products by reposting their photos on your owned media. It’s a symbiotic relationship: You validate your consumers as trendsetters and they validate your brand’s social presence. When it comes to incorporating user-generated content onto your owned media, the post-purchase inspiration factor is invaluable.

A second way to reward your customers is by sending them swag. This is especially relevant for the social media contests you might run to collect content. Send gifts, discounts and other rewards to the winners of your contests. Rewarding your strongest brand advocates is a great way to keep them posting, and to strengthen loyalty to your brand. 

Ultimately, the consumer’s voice is more powerful, memorable and trustworthy than that of the brand. If you are able to get customers posting about your brand, that boon can be leveraged in many ways.

Take advantage of user-generated content, whether that means creating shop-able galleries of customer photos on your owned media, placing customer photos in your paid ads or creating live displays of your visual content.

But the first step is to encourage customers to post visual endorsements and to collect these photos. If you follow the above steps, you'll be well on your way to running a successful end-to-end campaign on social media.