Waze Croud Sourced Maps

Fiberoptic · 09-02-2009, 11:47 AM

Food for thought -

This is the type of thing that needs to happen - with a bit less of a greedy big brother attitude.

Building the map could become fun and a addicting for many, especially as the base and algorithms get better.

http://www.waze.com

The big problem with Wayze is that they make no commitment about what they are doing with the data the community is creating.

Their Privacy Policy:
http://www.waze.com/legal/english/privacy.html

User Submissions You hereby grant Waze and the users of the Waze Service a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works of display, and perform the User Submissions; other Users may only use Your User Submission for non-commercial purposes, unless otherwise permitted by Waze.

Bugbyte · 09-09-2009, 09:37 PM

This is exactly what I had in mind. But you can see that they obviously want to profit from the data. I don't have a real issue with them making money on it, but they ought to make it available to others via an open API or something of the sort.

soundman98 · 09-10-2009, 08:38 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Bugbyte

This is exactly what I had in mind. But you can see that they obviously want to profit from the data. I don't have a real issue with them making money on it, but they ought to make it available to others via an open API or something of the sort.

i do have a problem with them making money on it-- all of the users are contributing for free, and waze is turning around and selling the openly contributed map data... though i don't think i would be so offended if there was a system in place for users to gain points for numbers of tracks uploaded, redeemable for something(1000 points gets you a couple free itunes downloads, etc...) i realize that it is easier said than done, but it could be both a little motivation, and at least a small thank you for helping contribute to a product they are selling

Bugbyte · 09-10-2009, 09:34 PM

Right, but the users are contributing the data and the Waze company is supplying software and information back - for free, I think. What else should they do to compensate users, in your opinion?

Figuring there are probably at least 10 people working at that company and a payroll of just say $70,000 a head fully loaded with benefits (and I think that is probably pretty low!), they have $840k a year in expenses and probably at least another $100k in facilities and servers and communication costs.

So, being really conservative (I'll bet the actual burn rate is much, much higher), they have to pull in $1 million a year just to break even. Where would they get that kind of money if they aren't selling the data somehow?

The open source route is, of course, another option and a different way to do it but they appear to be for-profit.

soundman98 · 09-10-2009, 10:09 PM

you make a very good point--i easily forget all the people that work behind the scenes to keep the servers up, and create the programming neccesary.

i guess my idea would only work if they were able to make a significant amount on selling the software and collected data... in that respect, i guess waze has been very well designed, and setup.

Fiberoptic · 09-11-2009, 09:50 AM

Here is another blog post I wrote on Friday of last week. It didn't get published until recently. It is worth checking out the movie.

http://www.mp3car.com/index.php/234-...in-Action.html

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