"Deep Linking:" a story of our future.

You are standing under an overhang in front of your apartment. This evening's rain is a downpour, and the wind is whipping water at your legs. It's a bit difficult picking out your Uber, but you can see the the license plate matches the number you memorized a few minutes earlier. This story is familiar because it happened to me one evening in San Francisco. For those of you who know the city, precipitation is unpredictable.

Source: SFGate

Let's continue our journey. Glancing down at the Uber app, it seems we have some traffic and our short trip will be arriving at our destination in a half hour's time. Maybe we should have walked. A few buttons and clicks and we are in Facebook Messenger to let our loved ones know that we'll be late. Some time passes before we remember something ... the exclusive restaurant we reserved on OpenTable won't hold our reservation without notice. Another few clicks and searches and we update the reservation, and also find the phone number to call to beg for consideration from the Ma?tre D'.

Well, that was fun. Maybe there's a better way. Something that doesn't rely on memory or attention. And that solution is coming soon. Through a magical collaboration between Uber (or Lyft or Didi), OpenTable, and Messenger, everything we did can be completed within the Uber smartphone app that we started with inside the apartment lobby. It's called mobile application Deep Linking. (see definition below)

Here's how. As we requested our ride and entered our destination, the Uber app glanced at our calendar and found the reservation for Chez Awesome'. A quick search of our email found the other party at the OpenTable reservation confirmation. And this is where the magic happens.

Seeing that our arrival time is 15 minutes later than the reservation, the Uber app asks us if we want to update the reservation in OpenTable, offering also to make the call to the upscale restaurant. Knowing that our sweethearts are patiently (or impatiently) waiting for this special evening to begin, a Facebook Messenger window pops up with a pre-formatted message that we can update or send right directly to our dinner guests. Without leaving the Uber app, just about everything has been taken care of for us.

And that's a future we might really enjoy.

Definition of Deep Linking:

"In the context of mobile apps, deep linking consists of using a uniform resource identifier (URI) that links to a specific location within a mobile app rather than simply launching the app."

Source: Wikipedia, "Mobile Deep Linking," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_deep_linking

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These words are my own. They do not represent the position of any other organization, human, or bot; unless otherwise indicated.

Copyright (c) 2018, Jack C Crawford, All rights reserved