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.
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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.
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.
