Facebook appears to be close to making another billion-dollar acquisition to once again ramp up its mobile efforts: according to three reports in the Israeli press at Calcalist and sister publication Ynet and The Marker (all in Hebrew), Facebook has approached Waze, the social mapping and traffic app maker, and is now in advanced due dilligence on a deal that Calcalist puts at between $800… → Read More
Waze, the app that uses crowdsourced data to build its maps and provide real-time traffic information, is introducing a new feature today allowing users to report road closures.
This seems like a pretty natural extension of what Waze does — drivers could already report things like accidents, so this is just giving them another way to get important information into the system. In fact… → Read More
At the beginning of this year, social GPS app Waze was the rumored target of an Apple acquisition. Had the linkup happened, it would have been a rare case of the Cupertino company acquiring a startup. But, as it turns out, there wasn’t a deal, even though Waze is a data partner for Apple’s mapping software. January might not have started out with as huge a bang for Waze as some people had hoped… → Read More
Yesterday, we ran a big story: Is Apple Plotting A Route To A Waze Acquisition? Rumours On The Road Point To Yes. That’s huge news for a few reasons: Apple rarely makes startup acquisitions — Waze is a hot startup with good buzz — the Apple Maps fiasco — the list goes on. But there’s just one little problem: the deal isn’t actually happening.
That information comes from multiple sources… → Read More
There can be no doubt that one of the hottest startups of the last couple of years has been social sat-nav smartphone app Waze. Not surprising in an era when – largely due to Apple initially dumping Google Maps in iOS 6 – everyone woke up, as if from some slumber, about the importance of decent mobile maps. Something many had taken for granted was thrown into sharp relief, especially when it… → Read More
Last week, the increasingly popular traffic and navigation app, Waze, launched a redesign that brought a deeper level of social integration to its user experience. Along with redesigned maps and a new interface, the startup added Facebook single sign-on and features that allow users to share their drives, pickups and meetup spots, communicate their status from the road and check-in at a… → Read More
Apple’s launch of its new mapping service, the ensuing backlash and management shakeup, have been anything but its proudest moments. Adding insult to injury, as Kim-Mai reported two weeks ago, Apple’s pain quickly turned into a gain for other map makers. However, for most, this was only a temporary blip. Only one company was able to sustain increased marketshare: Waze, which saw its share of U.S. → Read More
If I’m a company that makes a third-party mapping app for iOS, I am putting up billboards, tackling people in the streets, emailing every tech blog known to man and potentially stalking some of them to get the word out about my offerings. → Read More
Native app usage has been edging just ahead of mobile web usage among U.S. smartphone owners in the last few months, but when it comes to the category of travel, mobile web use all but disappears from the map. According to figures out today from Nielsen, 95% of all mobile traffic for travel-related content comes from native mobile apps — specifically on iOS and Android platforms. Mobile web … → Read More
Waze, the Israel-based social navigation and traffic service, today announced that it now has 20 million users. That’s quite a milestone for any startup, but what makes this number so impressive is that the company also announced that it added half of its users in the last six month and continues to grow quickly. Just in the last month, the company said, it added 1.8 million new users to its… → Read More
Shortly after yesterday’s Apple WWDC keynote there was plenty of chatter amongst the pundits, journalists and developers about which apps Apple had screwed over with iOS 6.
In particular is the turn-by-turn map services now baked into iOS 6, a move that removes Google Maps from the core OS altogether. Waze, which launched back in 2009, offers free crowd-sourced map data for traffic and… → Read More
Social mapping and navigation company Waze is partnering with 12 local broadcast stations including KGO-TV San Francisco, KABC Los Angeles, WFAA Dallas, and WPVI-TV Philadelphia, to bring its citizen-traffic reporting platform mainstream.
Founded in 2009, Waze offers free apps for the iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry and other mobile platforms, that include turn-by-turn navigation… → Read More
Social mapping and navigation company Waze has raised $30 million in new funding from Horizons Ventures Hong Kong (the fund that manages the private venture investments of Facebook investor Li Ka-shing), and the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Digital Growth Fund and iFund. This brings Waze’s total funding to over $55 million. John Malloy, Managing Partner of Blue Run Ventures and Jason Wong… → Read More
Social mapping and navigation company Waze has hit a big milestone today. The company has accumulated 3 million users in the past 7 months, with 5 million users in over 45 countries. It took just two months for Waze to rack up its last million users.
Founded in 2009, Waze offers free apps for the iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry and other mobile platforms that include turn-by-turn… → Read More
About a week ago, we noted that social mapping company Waze was getting big. Actually, with over 2 million drivers helping them map the planet, and over 250 million kilometers logged, they’re already really big. And today investors are putting their money where the miles are as the company has just raised a $25 million Series B round of funding.
The large second round is being led by existing… → Read More
It took Waze a full year to get 500,000 users. It then took another six months to hit a million. Three months after that, they hit 1.5 million. And in just the last two months, they’ve already surpassed 2 million users. In fact, they’re past 2.2 million, actually.
Yes, the Israel-based social mapping company has become a hit. And for good reason too — it’s a good idea and a fun one too. Thanks… → Read More
If you commute to work every day, chances are you’re not alone. There are people all around you on the road doing the same thing. And some may be even going to the same place. But when you’re each in your own vehicle, you obviously can’t communicate and interact. Social mapmaking tool Waze is trying to help with that.
A new feature in their Waze 2.0 release is that you can now form and join… → Read More
When it comes to mapping applications, Waze is probably the most fun one out there. It turns turn-by-turn navigation into a social experience, and a game (think: Pac-Man). It also happens to be free. And a few new features rolling out in the updated iPhone app today make it even more interesting.
The biggest new feature is the use of geolocated tweets for realtime traffic updates. One of Waze’s… → Read More
Editor’s note: The following is a guest post written by Robert Scoble, who travels the world for Rackspace interviewing tech geeks for building43.com. He’s one of the most popular (stalked) users of location-based services and has 8,215 friends on Foursquare. Here he writes about what the location-based world could look like in 2012 and what might keep it from happening.
It’s January 2012… → Read More
Turn-by-turn navigation was one of the features that iPhone users were most looking forward to with the release of the iPhone 3.0 software. Unfortunately, as users quickly found out, turn-by-turn meant either significantly more expensive apps, or a monthly fee. Not only does Waze do it for free, but it offers an interesting gaming element to boot.
The reason Waze can be free while other… → Read More
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