Between buying Instagram and calling Facebook Home the "next version" of his social network, it's fairly clear Mark Zuckerberg's obsessed with the prime real estate on your smartphone. Israeli newspaper Calcalist is reporting that Zuckerberg and Co. are eyeing up crowd-sourced GPS app Waze, which generates mapping data by pulling it from its users' devices in real time.
Waze uses satellite signals from members' smartphones to generate maps and traffic data, which it then shares with other users, offering real-time traffic info. Waze and Facebook partnered in October 2012 when Waze released its updated version that allows users to share their drive with their Facebook friends.
This would be Facebook's third acquisition in Israel. It bought Snaptu in 2011 for $70 million and Face.com in 2012 for $60 million.
The paper says that Facebook entered into discussions around six months ago, with prices in the $800 million to $1 billion range being mentioned -- and while that sounds like a big number, it's still only a dollar per user.
Source: Reuters
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