‘We plan to take Crowdsourcing further than it has ever gone before…..

We want media companies to engage users as citizen journalists, and NBC2 is just the first step toward this. We want to enable local governments to encourage users to report about hazards on the road to help keep our roads safe. We want major brands to provide wazer’s with incentives to visit their establishment, helping you find deals on the road… We have lots of big plans for 2011, and now have the funding to achieve them.

So – things are just taking off. The future is social–come join us for the ride!’

These are the words of Crowdsourcing start-up Waze, a real-time GPS and traffic service, recently raised $25 million in venture funding. Blue Run Ventures, Magma and Vertex led the round, which includes participation from strategic investor Qualcomm Ventures.

The question is, what did those investors see in Waze and their business model that convinced them to put $25m into the project?

With 2.2 million users, in over 100 million countries, Waze have utilised Crowdsourcing to build a really strong client base. They clearly see that interacting with their users and making them feel part of the process is a great way of keeping customers coming back and ensuring their service stays efficient and user friendly.

In the same way PBS used Crowdsourcing and social media to report the facts of air travel, Waze are trying to use the same kind of methods to report road travel issues (Let’s hope that no one is driving and Tweeting!). It seems Crowdsourcing is the future of the informative news update! Next stop, Crowdsourced weather updates….wait a minute!!