Was Uber really the 'first'? Lyft a similar service came out of zimride.com which was doing ride sharing as early as 2007 though perhaps not through a smart phone in real time.
Zimride did indeed launch in 2007 as a Facebook based carpooling app. It wasn't real-time at that time. Don't know if/when Zimride built an iPhone app but I built a real-time ridesharing iPhone app in 2008: http://ridecell.com/gt/
Uber started in 2009.
Disclaimer: The company I started, InstantCab, competes directly with Uber.
