Skip to main content

Waze rumored talking with Facebook about deal or acquisition (UPDATED)

I'm a long-time fan of Waze, and wrote recently why I prefer their navigation with crowd-sourced traffic data  over even the latest Google Maps.

Now the rumors are breaking in Israel that Facebook and Waze are in discussions, either about a deal or about an acquisition.

At first blush, an alliance of this sort would make sense for a few reasons:

1. Waze has been moving in the direction of incorporating local business locations into their mapping and navigation app.  If this was extended to mobile local search, it would fit great into Facebook's agenda.

2. If navigation were linked to Facebook, we'd see a lot more people posting status updates about where they're driving, and Facebook would get a lot more information about where their users were.

3. It's only a matter of time until a bigger navigation company comes out with crowd-sourced traffic data - certainly we've reported signs that Google and others have active research in the area.  Despite the Waze CEO's recent comment that they're not looking for an acquisition, it does seem that now would be a good time.

ADDED 2 HOURS LATER:

 After some more thought, acquiring Waze would fit several mobile agendas that we've previously speculated that Facebook is working on.  In this report, written in June, we analyzed the following new mobile directions that evidence shows Facebook is pursuing:

Location sharing and friend finding: 'Nuff said - it's clear that acquiring a top-notch mapping and navigation system would enable Facebook to leapfrog into the friend-finding and location-sharing areas.  Waze already does this in a rudimentary way, all it would take was integration into Facebook's friends lists and existing location databases.

Social local search: Facebook has a leg up on local search in that they can leverage opinions of each user's friends. Waze would give them the serious location app and infrastructure on which to deploy it. And Waze already shows some stores and other businesses on their maps.

Location-based advertising and promotions: Knowing more user locations would be a huge advantage in Facebook's attempts to monetize mobile users. And many users use their mapping and navigation system for more time than they use Facebook. Again, the synergy is clear.

For more details on Facebook's work in these areas, see this report.  Again, Facebook's work in these areas is documented. Whether (or how) they're bringing them to market is an open question.

As long-time users of both Waze and Facebook, this rumor is fun to think about.....

Popular posts from this blog

33 Indoor Location Related Start-up Acquisitions

  Acquisitions Continue in the Indoor Location Industry; Grizzly Analytics Shows Price Growth at the High End and Continuity at the Low End New York, NY, February 22, 2021 - Despite the recent pandemic, M&A deals in the indoor location area have maintained a steady pace of 4-5 deals a year. At the high end of the spectrum, prices have increased to up to $400 Million for the highest priced recent deal and $165 Million for the second highest. At the lower end, many earlier stage companies have been acquired in the $2-3 Million range. A newly updated report from Grizzly Analytics gives prices and strategic details for 33 acquisitions in the indoor location area.  While the highest priced indoor location acquisitions have historically involved chip-based technologies, recent acquisitions have been more varied. “A few years ago the focus of indoor location M&A was all around pure localization technologies. The biggest deal to date is in fact for a chip-based localization ...
Read more

Adding real value to smartphone camera pictures

Most technology features follow a similar path, from imitation to improvement to transformation.  First they imitate something that came before, like telephones imitating the telegraphs of yesteryear.  Then they improve on them, like phones entering individual homes. Then they transform the entire endeavor, completely surpassing the previous technology, like phones automatically connecting people without operator involvement, which enabled society to communicate in ways that telegraph users never contemplated. Cellphone cameras are following a similar path.  At the beginning cellphone cameras were imitating digital cameras, adding the convenience of carrying only one device but basically doing the same as digital cameras did.  Then they improved on them, both with quality improvements and with the ability to share pictures wirelessly without wiring the phone to a computer.  The ability to instantly share and synchronize pictures from a phone is somewhat transf...
Read more

See great indoor location tech from the 2017 testbed

The videos from the Indoor Location Testbed at GeoIoT World 2017 are now released! Here is your chance to see how these solutions performed in our real-world evaluation, in the videos below. The testbed evaluated each solution by walking around a real-world venue, the GeoIoT World 2017 conference, measuring performance at 10 pre-selected points. Click here for the testbed report, which analyzes each solution's performance in a wide variety of metrics, including real-time accuracy, accuracy stabilization, consistency, latency, floor change, first fix, setup time & more. Let's start with BlooLoc's tag-based solution, which achieved accuracy under 2m in real-time and under 1.5m after stabilization: Then let's look at the infrastructure-free solution from GipsTech , which achieved accuracy under 2m without using any beacons or radio signals: Next is GipsTech's solution with BLE added: Next is BlooLoc's phone-based solution: Fin...
Read more