It looks like Facebook could be dropping another $1 billion in a new acquisition, at least that’s what the rumors are claiming as there have been reports that Facebook and Waze are reportedly in advanced talks over a possible acquisition valued between $800 million to $1 billion. This report comes from business daily Calcalist who revealed that the talk actually begun 6 months ago and that due diligence is currently underway after a term sheet was signed.
For those unfamiliar with Waze, the company uses satellite signals from their subscribers’ smartphones in order to help generate maps and traffic data, which is then used to share with other users in the form of real-time traffic info. Considering that Facebook has been making a lot of effort in going mobile, what with the Facebook Home launcher and the HTC First smartphone, acquiring Waze would make sense.
While we can’t be sure what Facebook plans to do with Waze if they were to acquire it, the fact that it is a location-based service could help Facebook beat out competition from services such as Foursquare by offering up better information to potential advertisers while allowing for local deals at the same time. Naturally both Waze and Facebook have declined to talk about this rumor, so we guess we will just have to wait and see.