The Power Of Mobile CrowdSourcing. Waze and CitySourced.

Posted on 19. Nov, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci in Mobile

According to the Wikipedia definition, in a crowd-sourced model, problems are broadcast to an unknown group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. Users—i.e. the crowd—form communities and submit solutions. Individuals, who participate, are rewarded economically (think of the Netflix challenge) or by means of social rewards (think of the Ted Open Translation Project, where translators are allowed to have a prestigious Ted profile).

There are various examples of companies, that have been entirely built on crowd-sourcing. Wikipedia itself is one. The Internet has provided us with an unprecedented ability to create networks of previously unreachable experts and connect their brain power.

But what happens when instead of online, communities form in real-life and are ubiquitously connected through mobile devices? New problems can be solved, which science and technology had been unable to address.

Take Traffic as an example. Despite all the progress in technology, infrastructure and science of the last 50 years, we’re simply incapable of finding a smarter solution to traffic better than forcing ourselves to drive in inconvenient hours. Which in most cases is not an option.

Waze, an Israeli start-up, is tackling the problem from a newer perspective. As you drive around, the Waze mobile app – for Iphone, Android and Symbian phones- automatically feeds a real-time stream of data into the Waze engine (such as average speed and current location). Users can also send text updates and photos to help other drivers in the area stay up to date with what’s going on.

As more and more users drive a specific area, the Waze engine keeps learning and updating itself: it picks up on the streets, tendencies, and more to produce a driver-generated map. It also learns to rank its users, and assign them a trustworthiness score, based on the reliability of the information provided.

Waze Map

The challenges that Waze faces in order to become a game-changer aren’t small: it needs cartographers to complete its maps world-wide, since it doesn’t license any, and it needs a critical mass of users.

But, despite its limit, Waze is a brilliant early benchmark of the dramatic impact that crowd-sourced information can have in our lives, when knowledge gets physically distributed in real-time and through social-connected devices, cell phones.

The potential applications are infinite.

Another example is CitySourced, a TechCrunch50 favorite. The app on your Blackberry, Android or iPhone has a simple goal: it lets you take a picture of an infraction and file a report to your city government. The report goes off in real-time to a City Hall, complete with location data. On top of real-time data, city officials can also use the CitySourced analytics to predict and identify clusters and take action accordingly.

The app is free for the user and cities pay an annual license fee for the dashboard. CitySourced has already a deal with the city of San Jose, Calif. and received an investment from Palm.

Share and Enjoy: