When we use the term crowdsourcing it implies active participation by humans with smart phones. Regarding Google’s recent news, this is a very important difference from their use of the term crowd-sourcing which engages a phone to provide data about humans.

We launched our crowdsourced daily driving app (traffic, turn by turn navigation and live reports) because current traffic and map technologies are flawed. We want to disrupt the entire method of collection and open it up to people as a free service. Since then, lots of folks are adopting this approach. This is incredibly validating. It will be a race.

At waze, we believe that the strength of the “crowd” is more than just as a passive source for  data collection.

We are dedicated to engaging the community for the good of all its members.  Wazers are helping build our service from the ground up, by editing the map, reporting events, adding pictures and text, sharing their GPS points, validating traffic, testing new releases, giving us feedback, helping each other on the forum and a variety of other community actions.  With this vibrant community, we aim to build a better service than just colors on a display map.

So…  as we work hard on our next release that will be full of the community’s suggestions, comments and needs – we would like to thank our wazer’s for their participation and assure you that, to us, you are more than a cheap data point.  We are doing our best to incorporate your feedback into the upcoming release and look forward to building, together, a superior service.