Waze:driver-generated live map starts in the U.S.

A new Israeli start-up called Waze is hitting the American shores this week:its motto is to build from scratch a live map for drivers. To make it simple it is a kind of TomTom Map Share and HD traffic but without the turn by turn navigation software. Instead of navigating from A to B Waze wants to offer driving information to commuters (on their mobile phone or PC):answering to simple,but highly important needs such as “which way should I go today? How much time will be my commute this morning?”. All the system is built on crowdsourcing:every user is building the map as well as reporting actively and passively about the live events happening in real-time.

Building a live driving map of the United States using crowdsourcing might sound pretty ambitious at first sight but Waze optimism is built on the success experienced so far in Israel where it was launched to the public in January 2009. In only four months 90% of the Israeli street network has been recorded in the Waze database and over 80,000 drivers are relying on the system for their commute.

To make things slightly easier Waze is only starting its U.S. venture in the San Francisco Bay Area with an Alpha version of its software to fine tune its system for a later,nation-wide launch.

How does it work?

The Waze client runs on users’smartphones (Nokia,Android and soon iPhone),it automatically and anonymously sends back GPS points as they drive. This data is then used to build and constantly update the road grid,driving directions,road changes,traffic flow,and more. Waze also uses aggregated driving speed data to determine traffic jams and other changes in road conditions. Drivers can report road problems and some map inaccuracies with one click on the client;more extensive map editing is done via the waze website. The waze map platform is soon to open APIs to allow developers to build other features and applications that leverage the waze-generated collection of live map data.

In the United States,instead of starting a map from scratch,Waze will be using the Tiger census map data as a basemap. This free federal map data is now getting a bit old but at least it is a good start so the first users don’t have a blank screen.

VC funded

Waze,which was previously known as Freemap or Linqmap was started in 2006 as a one man project by Ehud Shabtai,a software engineer. Last year,Waze raised a first round of financing for an undisclosed amount from three venture capital firms:Blue Run Ventures (USA),Magma Ventures (Israel) and Vertex Venture Capital (Israel).

Continued…

Waze is a free service to its user so the obvious question is “how do you make money?”,something we asked to Waze CEO Noam Bardin who answered:“Having a live map is a very valuable asset. We are already receiving demands from third parties to license the data we have built in Israel”.

While Noam Bardin and his team (25 people) are just getting started in the United States,they already have plans to launch in Europe,“probably in the last quarter of 2009,if not,definitely in the first quarter of 2010”,said Bardin.

Waze is obviously an interesting example of a new way to build maps and real-time traffic information based on a free,valuable service. Its U.S. success will now depend on the company’s marketing know-how to replicate the fast consumer adoption experienced in Israel.