Lyft is that nicer, gentler company. That's their differentiator: "We're like Uber, but friendlier." Whether that can succeed in the marketplace will depend upon consumers like cutthroat & efficient over friendly & quirky. So far most of my friends prefer Uber, but then again, we're evil techies who are taking over SF with our laptops.
Lyft is US-only so far, so they haven't had a chance to run into European regulators, airport operators and cabbies. They also haven't entered combatant US markets like Las Vegas.
I try to distribute my spending equally, since a dominating player would be quick to raise the prices on consumers, but it's certainly hard to spend more money on Lyft unless you happen to live within one of their coverage markets and don't travel much.
Interesting, I was just in the USA and caught up with people my partner knows in SF (none techies mind you). All of them told me uber was old news, service was not as good, coverage not as good as Lyft.
I have no idea if it's true while over there but enough of them said it that I stopped using Uber while I was in SF and only used Lyft, and managed to convert my partner's parents to using Lyft as well.
