Waze expanding its ride-sharing app

Waze Carpool has previously been limited to just California and Texas in the US.

Waze's Carpool app, which connects those who need a ride with those willing to give them and charges riders a small fee to cover the drivers' costs, has so far only been available in California, Texas and Israel. But today, the company announced that Carpool has arrived in Washington state. The expansion comes after a recent update to the app that allowed users to select who they'll be riding with rather than being matched blindly. Riders and drivers can now make their decisions based on star ratings, profile information and connections to friends or their place of work. Waze also introduced the ability to filter by gender or limit riders to coworkers only.

While today's expansion covers just one state, it's much more significant than just expanding a few cities at a time. And the wider availability along with the recent changes made to the platform show that Waze is getting pretty serious about bringing Carpool to more people.