Sidecar stops service; Medfusion’s new portal; DePont’s job cuts; Facebook IPO suits;

In today’s Bulldog wrapup of technology and life science news:

Ride sharing service Sidecar is shutting down
Cary-based Medfusion launches a Spanish portal
Facebook must face suits over IPO
DuPont launches job cuts as merger with Dow moves ahead

The details:

Delivery and ride-hailing app company Sidecar stops services

Delivery and ride-hailing pioneer Sidecar, which struggled to compete with bigger rivals Uber and Lyft, says it will stop offering services.

In a message posted to Medium, co-founders Sunil Paul and Jahan Khanna said Sidecar’s rides and deliveries ended at 5 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday.

“Today is a turning point for Sidecar as we prepare to end our ride and delivery service so we can work on strategic alternatives and lay the groundwork for the next big thing,” they wrote.

The three-year-old San Francisco company’s investors included Google Ventures and Richard Branson.

While Uber Technologies says it’s operating 68 countries and Lyft gives rides in 190 cities, Sidecar did business in just eight markets across the U.S. Paul and Khanna posted that Sidecar faced a “capital disadvantage.”

Uber and Lyft have raised billions of dollars in funding, and along the way they have taken the lead in the ride-hailing market. Chinese taxi-hailing company Didi Kuaidi recently announced a partnership with Lyft.

Apps for hailing rides have become a huge business in just a few years, but it’s not clear how many companies will survive as the industry grows. Companies are grappling with new regulations and unionization pushes and other industries are trying to borrow some of their innovations. Since Sidecar was struggling to gain passengers, it tried to retool in August by focusing on business-to-business deliveries of food and products over giving rides.

Harry Campbell, who drives part-time for Lyft and Uber and blogs as The Rideshare Guy, said that distinction won’t exist in a few years. Today Uber and Lyft mostly move passengers and Postmates only delivers food, but he thinks the companies will evolve into networks.

“The lines are going to be a lot more blurred going forward,” he said. “An Uber driver might be transporting a combination of passengers, food and packages.”

He said Sidecar broke ground in the industry, but other companies did a better job of capitalizing on the ideas it pioneered.

“They had all these cool features,” he said, “but people didn’t even know what ridesharing was.”

Medfusion launches a new portal

Cary-based Medfusion, which offers services related to electronic health records and physican practices, is rolling out an expanded Patient Portal in Spanish. The multilingual expansion follows the recent launch of a redesigned user interface that Medfusion says is simpler.

“Our customers wanted and needed to be able to support their patients who speak English as a second language,” said Katie Steindl, Medfusion Solution Manager. “We understand that language issues are a real barrier to patient engagement and communication, and we are committed to helping bridge that gap.”

All automatic messages and functionality are translated through a service provided by a certified translator. “Portal invitations can be provided in Spanish, and when patients activate their accounts, the Portal is pre-set to Spanish. However, the message content to and from patients can be translated by the practice staff as desired to maintain clinical accuracy. The preferred language is remembered on the Portal from session to session and from device to device,” the company adds.

Medfusion also offers bilingual online chat support.

DuPont moves ahead on job cuts ahead of Dow merger

DuPont says it will cut 1,700 jobs in its home state of Delaware and thousands more globally as it prepares for its merger with Dow Chemical.

The companies announced earlier this month that they would join to create a giant chemical producer that will eventually be split into three independent companies.

At that time, DuPont announced a $700 million cost savings and restructuring program but did not specify how many jobs would be impacted or where. DuPont CEO Ed Breen sent a letter to employees Tuesday informing them that approximately 1,700 Delaware positions would be eliminated in the beginning of the year.

The company has approximately 54,000 employees worldwide and said the restructuring program will affect about 10 percent of that workforce.

Facebook must face IPO suits

Facebook must face two shareholder class action lawsuits filed over its IPO offering in May 2012, a federal judge says.

Reuters reports that the New York judge ruled “retail and institutional investors who claimed they lost money by purchasing Facebook shares at inflated prices may pursue their respective claims as groups.”

Facebook said it was disappointed with the decision and that the class certification was “without merit,” Reuters said.