There are a handful of new Internet businesses that are experiencing exponential growth. They are shaping new ways to use phones and communicate. 
I learned about Waze.com today from a presentation on growing businesses. Waze started in Israel and quickly grew to an installed base of over 14 million users. They specialize in Car Navigation systems, but then this is an app for your Smart Phone.
The video below does a good job of explaining the Waze service. It is basically a user knowledge base that is constantly updated from people’s phones. It happens both passively and actively. The methods of update look simple and they take into account requirements to not allow users to do unsafe things while in motion – so they have really simplified commands.
Today, the points of interest are improving the basic maps to include new roads and get the names of roads right, and then provide a dynamic picture of what is happening now with traffic congestion, parking and speed traps and cameras.
Tomorrow… well this kind of user generated network could provide the same kinds of data like Foursquare, Gowalla and other check in apps. I would guess that if the business continues its meteoric rise, it will need to partner or combine with parallel business ideas.
Australia’s phone networks can be woefully slow and painfully expensive. I can see the appeal of using this kind of service where you have unlimited high speed data plans. I wonder if that will be a factor here? There are a lot of new services that will rely upon lots of data and speed – so I guess Australian mobile networks will have to change.
I thought it was interesting that their presentation seems to be focused on the Android user and seemed to leave out iPhone users. More about Waze > http://world.waze.com/
