We’ve been big fans of Waze ever since it debuted and it looks like some of you out there like it too, as the company just announced that it has surpassed the 7 million driver mark. If that weren’t enough, it also has received $30 million in funding from the likes of Horizons Ventures Hong Kong, iFund and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) Digital Growth Fund.
For those of you who don’t know, Waze is a crowd-source, traffic navigation app that also includes tie-ins to multiple social networks and some gamification elements. Basically, if you have a smartphone and drive often, you should be using the Waze app.
Waze has always been an interesting product but there are thousands, if not millions, of apps that would be great if they had a large enough user base to be useful. With its 7 million drivers, Waze is safely in that useful category and because of its crowd-sourced nature, the more people who use Waze, the better the service gets.
Waze still has a lot of room to grow and I’m sure the executives are licking their chops at the potential of the Chinese markets. In the short term, I’d expect it to bring its 3.0 features to other platforms. While I’m not hearing it from Waze, I could easily think of a few large Internet companies which could benefit greatly from the data Waze is generating and I wouldn’t be completely shocked if we saw an acquisition.
Check out this infographic it cooked up showing how quickly it’s grown.
