Comments: "Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure!"

[shmupi2]

Andreas - excellent post!

You are absolutely correct that if Waze want's to be successful, they need to focus on retaining users. Of course the infrastructure working correctly is critical to keeping users engaged and using the product.

Also, great points regarding Waze needing to reach out to the 1% of the users doing 90% of the map editing work. The new Cartouche is great, but really needs to be finished up. The periodic slow downs in the editor as well as the very frustrating road layer not updating that occurs from time to time needs to be resolved. And as you say, the improved Update Request mechanism needs to be deployed - promised many times, but not yet delivered.

Patience is needed though. Waze needs to clear the nagging infrastructure issues that they are currently focusing on.

Thanks for the positive feedback and reinforcement. Yet I believe the infrastructure improvements are hygiene, anybody is expecting the server to be up and give him a route, not an error message it can't calculate right now.

A service that isn't working is worth nothing, we're experiencing this here in Malaysia with our massive broadband demand. You can't use it, it's worth nothing and will be worth nothing even if you give it for free, that's feedback from our customer but I think Waze users think the same.

Problem is that people working on the Internet think that acquisition is basically 7 billion prospects, the total world population. It's not and I do think that after two years or more in operation Waze could have been way more successful if they had intended to work on retaining customer from the beginning on, not just focusing on acquiring them and then do nothing when they lose them after 5 minutes.

But Noam is the CEO and making the calls here

Just my two cents worth,

Andreas

Shalom Andreas ...just got the link to the post on the Israeli forum and mentioned your comment.

You can use google translate to get a better impression :

http://translate.google.com/translate?s ... 6t%3D12679

Your comment and my cross-links made it work for both forums and also got Ehud to reply on both.

Hopefully we will get better cooperation from the Waze management and employees....to begin with is at least an email address to be used only by area managers to contact the support team and get a better response time from them. More transparency from them regarding the future of Waze will be welcomed as well.

Regards,
Shmupi

[shmupi2]

I doubt you ever close the gap between the US and the world. US and Canada is your "world" and the rest, particularly Latin America where Google does not navigate, is, as you say, in a different second-class infraestruture and hence your attention is also neglected.

In my area the map has not been updated in the past year. The Waze "map as you drive" does don't work in this part of the world. The pointing system gets updated if somebody reminds you to do so.

Android is another issue you overlook in spite of your repeating "COMING SOON". It has been almost three months since you released the revamped iPHONE version and Android still "coming soon". I think you are unaware that the iPhone has lost more than 30% marketshare in the past year whereas Android has gained more than 25. Just don't understand your direction and Directors

The same is valid for Blackberry users who got answers many time here , Israeli forum , on Facebook and frontally that a new version will be released fro BB OS....and then nothing not even fixing the known bugs....but my log file keeps growing

[AlanOfTheBerg]

I doubt you ever close the gap between the US and the world. US and Canada is your "world" and the rest, particularly Latin America where Google does not navigate, is, as you say, in a different second-class infraestruture and hence your attention is also neglected.

Maps are updated by the community, not Waze. I worked to update many roads in Honduras after a trip there and found there are very few Wazers, but they are growing, especially in the bigger cities. We need more map editors anywhere they are.

In my area the map has not been updated in the past year. The Waze "map as you drive" does don't work in this part of the world. The pointing system gets updated if somebody reminds you to do so.

Android is another issue you overlook in spite of your repeating "COMING SOON". It has been almost three months since you released the revamped iPHONE

What planet are you on? Waze 3.0 was released on Oct 13. It's only Nov 5 today, so does 23 days = 3 months? I don't think so. Very little Android work was being done prior to the iPhone v3 release, so it started in earnest after October 13. I don't think it's so easy to put out a solid navigation app for the fractured hardware landscape that Android runs on. Why iPhone came first is well documented.

[dmcconachie]

It's been a month at most since 3.0 was released iOS. They have repeatedly said they are aware that Android market share is leading now but iOS continues to be easier to develop for if only because it is currently less fragmented.

[ricardowec]

I doubt you ever close the gap between the US and the world. US and Canada is your "world" and the rest, particularly Latin America where Google does not navigate, is, as you say, in a different second-class infraestruture and hence your attention is also neglected.

In my area the map has not been updated in the past year. The Waze "map as you drive" does don't work in this part of the world. The pointing system gets updated if somebody reminds you to do so.

Android is another issue you overlook in spite of your repeating "COMING SOON". It has been almost three months since you released the revamped iPHONE version and Android still "coming soon". I think you are unaware that the iPhone has lost more than 30% marketshare in the past year whereas Android has gained more than 25. Just don't understand your direction and Directors

[the1who]

Thanks for taking the time to write a post in the forums. I appreciate it. Thanks for the great product that we are passionate about and tend to voice our opinions on.

[eshabtai]

We appreciate your feedback, the good and the bad. It is obvious by just reading your comments that all of you are very passionate about waze and would like to see it deliver on its promise. This kind of feedback (especially the things you feel are not working properly) is very helpful and will be taken into consideration as we prioritize our plans.

As for some of the questions:
- Our routing servers are currently running under capacity. We still have some slow paths which may affect the response time but the service should be stable. We do have some work we're doing on improving the tiles replacement when we update the map every few days so in that period of time you may see some issues (timeout, broken routes). This is being worked on. But in general I'm not aware of any issues. So if you constantly get timeouts or broken routes every day, please post about it (with details on the time and route).
- We know that the new cartouche backend is not stable and we're working on it. Some of the issues will only be solved after we rebuild all the cache. We'll update when that process is done. It would be helpful if you could start a thread and just note the time and the issue you're having. We are monitoring most aspects of the backend which should automatically notify us when issues arise, but we might be missing something.

Thanks again,

Ehud

[cymike]

the new Cartouche really makes editing much easier.

Could you elaborate?
I for one find the old Cartouche much more usable then the new one (Papyrus). Cartouche feels much more smooth/responsive when editing road geometry for example. Not to mention that Papyrus is feature-incomplete and buggy. Just now (after reading your praise to it) I've tried to give it another shot only to get "an error occurred, please try again later" message while trying to save my edits

[a4xrbj1]

@a4xrbj1
If you believe Noam did a big mistake on organizing a proper welcome service
I would like to invite you (Noam pls do not hate my worlds) to download OSM navigator Iphone or Android version and use it in a massive way….. making a comparison with waze ………and you will go back to waze as fast as you can

Waze , on top, is providing written info to users how to use the navigator and how to edit : if people does not read it is not a Noam fault!
Asterix06

Ciao Asterix06,

I think you got my comment about proper welcome service wrong, I'm not comparing Waze to other GPS services and I agree with you that with it's realtime traffic updates on every road it is no 1 in being the most visionary!

You said: "Providing written info to users how to use the navigator and how to edit"? Do you think this is a welcome program? That's were the two of us disagree. Obviously as someone who's working the last 20 years in business on retaining customer, making sure they buy more products and increase their usage I do have another view on what a proper welcome program is

I'm 100% sure that Noam and his team will precisely understand what I mean and I do hope they pick up some of the points I mentioned and incorporate them into their long-term strategy.

I am just one of the 1 million points Wazers , I am fully aware of the problem we have at the moment, but I can only tell you that Waze is a couple of years ahead all other satnav , is the fastest in innovation and the others can only try to copy.
Waze is now a child on his way to become an adult: let’s us help him to do it in the best possible way.
It will pay back us in a way you cannot even imagine.
I feel proud to participate to waze project!
And you ?
Asterix06

Like I said above, well aware your status as no 1 and having almost 3 times more points than me, the best I managed was getting to no 10 spot in the world but still light years away from what you have done for Waze.

But are you indicating that people that come up with feedback to improve Waze like I did cannot be proud to participate in this project?

Saluti da Kuala Lumpur,

Andreas

[asterix06]

@a4xrbj1
I read your answer to the Waze CEO.
We all are aware of difficulties waze is faced in these days, but I was astonished me is the fact I did not under stand what waze is : is not a toy or a game or a service as facebook or twitter (items you can ONLY use) , but it’s a navigation system ( with some social features in it) builder by users !
Waze created the program and all the top editors and other editors work to let it work properly as much as possible

I belong to the Italian Waze community (one of the biggest in Waze’s World) and I can tell you they when I joined waze the map in Italy was a red line of about 40 km : nothing else

But nobody complained we started working and now a day people can navigate in 70% on Italian routes without any problem.
You have to keep clearly in mind that part of people joining waze do it or for the social or because it’s free and even they do not read what waze is the reality.

If you believe Noam did a big mistake on organizing a proper welcome service
I would like to invite you (Noam pls do not hate my worlds) to download OSM navigator Iphone or Android version and use it in a massive way….. making a comparison with waze ………and you will go back to waze as fast as you can

Waze , on top, is providing written info to users how to use the navigator and how to edit : if people does not read it is not a Noam fault!

I am just one of the 1 million points Wazers , I am fully aware of the problem we have at the moment, but I can only tell you that Waze is a couple of years ahead all other satnav , is the fastest in innovation and the others can only try to copy.
Waze is now a child on his way to become an adult: let’s us help him to do it in the best possible way.
It will pay back us in a way you cannot even imagine.
I feel proud to participate to waze project!
And you ?
Asterix06