Waze offers Real Time Social Games in Ecuador
Waze, which has a social network for drivers puts some virtual treasures in the asphalt you drive on. It just launched its application in Germany, France and Ecuador. The maps in these countries are based on both users’ input and official maps. Some areas aren’t fully covered. Waze offers an incentive for drivers that validate these areas.
The flow of news from this Israeli company continues. Not long after we wrote the Waze review, the Israeli company provides lots of news. Through Waze’s international partnership program, Waze provides constant updates for local map makers, while Waze users enjoy maps with larger coverage, not only depending on users’ input.
The first partnership was announced in the South American country of Ecuador. Distribution of smartphones isn’t wide, but Quito’s infamous traffic jams make this application a great pass-time for frustrated drivers. The local partner is Location World, which supplies maps to drivers in other South American countries.
In addition to Ecuador, two additional countries were announced: Germany and France. While Parisians use the Metro and Germans drive on the Autobahns without speed limits, these countries have their share of traffic jams. In these countries, Smartphones are much more popular.
In order to attract German and French drivers, Waze provides a fully localized version of their software. Directions are written and voiced out in the local language.
Waze’s maps in both countries aren’t complete, and input from the users is essential to validate the maps. All the drivers need to do is just turn on the software while driving. This doesn’t endanger other drivers. The incentive provided to them is virtual goodies. Apart from receiving more points and appearing higher on the scoreboard, Amazon gift cards are occasionally rewarded to drivers on certain roads. These come as a surprise, making the experience fun.
All in all, the guys at Waze work hard on new features, expansion to new markets and getting a better grip in existing ones. They need to reach a critical market share before competing companies try to bypass them.
More about Waze in the company index.
More posts by Yohay Elam »
Author: YohayElam
Yohay Elam is a problogger, with Forex Crunch being his primary site. Yohay belongs to the founding generation of Israeli political group blog Black Labor, a writer in the The Networking Blog and maintains his personal bi-lingual blog. Before becoming a problogger, Yohay worked as a programmer in various Israeli startups such as Metacafe.
4 Comments
2010-03-12
10:24:19
Waze offers Real Time Social Games with GPS in Ecuador | The Wadi http://bit.ly/bqngvU @waze #Israel #Tech #Social by @yohay
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
2010-03-12
16:17:36
I write from Ecuador, here Waze is nowthe most popular application in the local mobile phones and it became a basic tool to prevent the terrible traffic we have in Quito..... thanks Israel for send us waze!!!
2010-03-12
16:29:41
guaman , thanks for your comment! Great to hear that the application is useful in Quito.
2010-07-05
11:06:31
[...] on more devices and in more countries. We’ve recently reported about the growing usage of Waze in Ecuador. The small South American country is missing out on the real World Cup, but its drivers will sure [...]
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