As Di-ann is driving around the Bay Area she uses Waze (waze.com) to find her way. From Waze she gets routing, traffic and road closure information. In exchange, Waze tracks her location and knows her ultimate destination. It knows that she is going slower than expected on Highway 101 and that she is probably in traffic.
By aggregating similar data from its users across the Bay Area, Waze is also learning new routes from Di-ann. If she takes a different route, Waze will record and remember it as a valid route. Di-ann is Community Geographer and Customer Advocate for Israeli-based Waze.
Waze is taking advantage of the new possibilities opened up by 24/7-connected location-aware mobile phones. Users are aware that they are being tracked to benefit Waze. As Waze rolls out in different cities and countries, it tells initial users to keep Waze on as they drive—even if they don’t need Waze’s help finding their destinations—because their driving patterns will train Waze, and users will ultimately benefit. To encourage this sharing of information, Waze lets users accumulate points for the miles they drive. The first person down a street gets extra points.
This is premium content for LBx Journal members. To read the entire article please click here to join LBx Journal
