Erez from Waze explains how the app crowdsources traffic data and hazard reports from drivers in real time. The company sells anonymized data to cities and governments, and is testing location-based ads. Waze has strong adoption in Israel, Italy, the UK, and South America.
Questions this video answers
About 330,000 users.
About 800 new users per day.
About 60,000 users.
Selling anonymous map/traffic/statistical data (B2B to municipalities and DOTs) and developing location-based advertising/marketing.
Foursquare, Facebook, and Twitter.
This guy is asking now how the traffic in the chit chat. Yeah. And I don't want to say.
So who are you?
Hey, I'm Sam and I'm doing the business development in Waze. Yeah, yeah.
And we're driving around Tel Aviv.
We are now in the east of Tel Aviv. We go towards the west, trying to avoid the main highways. Actually it's not too bad now in the highway so we can go down.
So what is Waze? This is Waze here.
It's Waze and we are the car. You see traffic up ahead, but it's in the other direction. So I think we'll go just towards the ocean where the other people are. By the way, we can check if the police is still here if you want to. It's 59 minutes ago, so it's probably not.
So what is Waze?
Waze is a crowdsourcing community making maps, traffic information, any live information relevant to drivers. So while you drive with the application, you share your information with the community, either your speed or any other events such as police traps, traffic accidents. So it's fun. Yeah, yeah.
And why is it so popular here in Israel? Because in Israel I was using it and there's a lot more drivers here that use it than like in San Francisco.
I think it's only a matter of time. Just the fact that we started the year before San Francisco. Just a matter of time.
And why is this better than like Google Maps or other navigation systems?
It's real time. So the map is being updated every day, which is a very, very unique concep. You have the layer of traffic information that in Israel is the best one probably in the world. So traffic events are being uploaded like in delay of one or two minutes in every road, even in very minor roads. As you can see here, we can see police in this street traffic. You can see at a weather 11 km per hour. This is the average speed in this traffic jam. Yep. Let's zoom out a bit. You see some other traffic jams now it's a bit late now. It's already 1042, so there are very few traffic jams, a bit more police and many Wazers. This is not the entire ways is on the map. We just show a few. It's a chit chat here. Traffic.
And so when you. If we come across an accident, how do you report that to other people?
I just click on report, that's it. Okay.
And so it's easy to do. And it's easy to do even when you're driving.
It's one slack. Turn on your radio, it's one click. You don't have to write anything. You're not supposed to write anything. In Israel, most people. People do not write. In some countries we see people writing more text, especially in Italy. It's amazing. They're writing a lot in Italy. What's up about Italy? I don't know, just writing a lot, a lot of text. Something very, very different.
And this is a free service, right?
Yeah, all over the world.
And so how do you guys make money?
We make money from two paths. One is selling data. B2B and it's maps, traffic information, statistical information. We already start selling information in Israel. Municipalities, Department of Transportation are buying the information. It's all anonymous, so the users don't. Nothing has been disclosed. And we are going to add now also location based marketing, advertising. Again, a very unique concept. Not something that is not banners or something that will jump on your screen while you're driving because this is very dangerous. But we are building now a very unique concept of advertising and marketing and working with the major agencies in the world to develop it and enhance it. Right.
Are you putting any other kind of data on top of the maps like tweets that are location based or Foursquare?
We are connected to Foursquare and Facebook and Twitter. So events that you're doing you can upload to your account in Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. And we are enabling chitchat between the users and pinging one each other. And again, this is very cultural thing. In some countries it's mainly for saying what's up, Good morning, good evening, buenos dias. In other country we see it as something to. What's that?
It's a fire truck.
No, ambulance. Ambulance. And in some countries we see it as a means to communicate. It's dating people, capturing pictures of themselves. Not the traffic, not the police, but themselves. In some Mediterranean countries you see threads of 30 or 40 people chatting with each other. Yeah, I think I'll make a left turn somewhere. Just go back to the traffic, see if whenever I stop and there's a zero speed, there's a pop up of events around us.
And what are these events saying?
This chitchat says, how's the traffic at your end?
Got it. What other things are you finding it's good for? Especially in a place where there's a lot of people who are using the system.
I mean we can see today in the forum people that are asking this question. I mean people. First of all, it's a navigation system. So it gets you the best route to your destination give you a feeling about what it started like having a helicopter on top of your head and telling you what's around you. It's fun.
It's sort of a game, isn't it?
First of all, on your commute every day your trip is boring. You know the route, you know where you're going. And having seen other weather, read even the chit chat, see where the traffic, know where the police is. Something that you know. It's entertaining once you add games on top. This is something we've done in few countries. We did it two weeks ago in Israel where we put some icons on the map and people were collecting the points. Collecting the icons and got points. The ones that had the most points in a day one an iPod and in the entire week one an iPhone and people were collecting this point. It was very, very success. Cool.
And yeah, what's adoption like? How fast are you guys growing and what countries are you in?
In Israel we are now reaching about 330,000 users and it's with adoption about additional 800 per day, which is quite amazing. But it's the same number for almost a year. Very steady growth all the time in different countries. We see it really depends on what partnerships we have in each country. It depends on the PR that we are getting in the different countries. We had amazing success in Italy, for example, when an iPhone blogger, apparently the leading iPhone blogger, wrote about us without us knowing about it. And it was. It was quite amazing. It was quite amazing. And we have like 60,000 users in Italy. Wow. Without us doing anything in Italy. Same in the in the UK after an article in the BBC. And also now in South America. We're doing amazingly in South America. We might have the best map in Ecuador and Venezuela today.
Very cool.
Which is quite amazing. So if you go to Ecuador, Venezuela, I recommend it Waze. Very cool.
So it works worldwide. It doesn't just work in my local area. So I have it on my phone. Anything else I need to know about what to do with this?
No, just what's happening? Just download and use it.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Just a note from someone that they closed one lane in the street. So that's a hazard identification from user. Very cool.
