Introducing the Fully Redesigned Waze 3.0: Steering Drivers from Local Search to Local Discovery – Waze completes the social location data stack, bridging local discovery with navigation
(Palo Alto, Calif.) Oct 13, 2011 – Today marks a big step for social navigation app, Waze. In this latest evolution, Waze 3.0 for iPhone is the world’s first navigation system to champion local discovery by offering an end-to-end social experience of searching, navigating, and checking-in to destinations. In effect, Waze now operates on the only map stack that reflects real-time information and community-curated POIs such as street fairs, protests, and other local events on the social location stack. Waze 3.0 is also one of the first apps to leverage the new iOS5 Twitter capabilities.
The New Social Location Stack
Traditional GPS systems are built on a static, old world maps and points of interest, which never reflects real-time information about new businesses, pop-up shops, or live local events. The new social eco-system provides an osmosis of consumer-generated data from people driving, checking in, and reviewing locations in real-time. This layer of social location information is now available to drivers in a navigation setting. With community-curated data from Waze, Foursquare, & Yelp, drivers can now search for real-time events like the ongoing OccupyWallStreet protests as easily as they would find their local Walmart.
“Nothing beats the power of people when they come together….Our core differentiation has always been the social and real-time elements, so it was only natural for us to enhance the user experience with local discovery. Our community has been asking for these features for a while, and we listened,” said Yael Elish, VP of Product at Waze and project lead on the new redesign.
iOS 5 & The New Minimalist UI
Waze will be one of the first apps to integrate the new iOS5 Twitter API. Users who have stored their twitter credentials with Apple will be able to seamlessly tweet from Waze. Meanwhile, the new graphic redesign takes full advantage of the iPhone screen’s real estate by minimizing the Waze interface to display only 2 large buttons on a full screen map. In addition, a new display of traffic and events en route helps drivers makes the smartest travel choices before they leave. The guidance system has also been amplified with large fonts and complete text-to-speech capabilities for optimized hands-free navigation — plus the new aesthetic gives the app a little more swagger and style.
Waze is available for free the Apple AppStore or at http://m.waze.com.
About Waze
Waze is a social traffic & navigation app based on the world’s largest community of drivers sharing real time road info and contributing to the “common good” out there on the road. By simply driving around with Waze open users passively contribute traffic and other road data. Users can take a more active role by sharing road reports on accidents, police traps, or any other hazards along the way, helping to give other users in the area a ‘heads-up’ about what’s to come– and because it’s 100% user-generated, the more people who use Waze, the better (and more fun) it gets!