Some 12,000 black-cab drivers clogged the streets of central London yesterday, June 11, to protest the taxi-booking app Uber.
So what did Londoners do? Well, they downloaded Uber onto their smartphones.
The app jumped 47 points to land at #2 (registration required) on Apple’s UK iOS app store by the end of the strike, according to App Annie, a research and measurement firm. Uber’s UK manager told the Independent that signups for the app jumped 850% , compared with the same day of the week earlier.
And millions of Londoners who had never heard of Uber—see for example this Huffington Post piece answering the question ”What is Uber?“—suddenly discovered a new way to get around town.