Waze hit 34m users in 2012, expects to double that this year

It looks like there may well be something to this collaborative mapping lark after all. Social mapping and traffic tool Waze says it hit the 34-million user mark last year and expects to double that this year.

The Israeli-based company briefly posted a blog announcing the news. It’s unclear what the reasons for the blog being taken down were, but if the numbers are correct, it represents pretty solid growth from the 28-million users it last reported having back in October.

Along with the blog post, the company released an infographic to celebrate going past the 34-million user mark and, apparently, saving the world because that’s what crowd-sourced traffic apps to best, obviously.

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One claim that we can buy is that Waze saves the average user around five minutes a day. Over the course of a year those minutes definitely add up.

If Waze’s user base really has been ramping up, the extra effort it’s been putting into the product makes a lot of sense. Late last year, the app got a fresh lick of social paint. In August meanwhile it launched its own advertising platform, meaning that it’ll have a little more financial security.

The of course, there are those persistent Apple acquisition rumours, although no one’s really sure when, or even if, that might actually happen.