Facebook is in advanced talks to shop for Israeli social mapping company Waze, in keeping with a native business reporter, Assaf Gilad, who was first to the tale on a variety of similar tech buyouts.

The purchase price of the free, real-time traffic logging and GPS app can be around $1bn, based on the Calcalist journalist, significantly greater than previous offers said to has been made but inline with last year’s Instagram acquisition. The deal will be half cash, half stocks.

Although rumours have ciruclated earlier linking Waze with both Microsoft and Apple, this appears to be like essentially the most solid story yet. Negotiations will have stalled because Waze’s management are keen making sure that the corporate remains in Israel, while similar acquisitions made by Facebook, like Snatptu and Face.com, were moved to Silicon Valley. Waze is additionally determined to continue operating as an independent entity.

Why Waze

The team behind Waze would clearly be a fine asset to Facebook’s growing mobile operations. Waze itself may provide an invaluable, unified and interactive cross-platform map experience for Facebook users, who’re currently offered Bing while on Facebook’s website, and Google Maps on Android.

The app isn’t always currently ad-supported, so like Instagram, this is not the buyout of a money-making machine. The points-based, community-driven app, which has greater than 40m users worldwide spotting speed cameras, petrol stations and traffic jams, makes great use of Twitter to assist resolve issues and improve the service it offers. This loyal grassroots may be do away with by Facebook’s involvement, as Instagrammers were.

But while many were sceptical about Instagram’s future, Time Magazine reported last month that the app has greater than thrice the choice of users it had on the time of acquisition – growing from 30m to 100m. However, the piece also points out that the photo-sharing network still isn’t making Facebook any money.