What3words

What3words is a proprietary geocode system that is designed to identify any location with a resolution of about 3 metres (9.8 ft). What3words encodes geographic coordinates into three dictionary words; the encoding is permanently fixed. For example, the front door of 10 Downing Street in London is identified by ///slurs.this.shark.[1] What3words differs from most other location encoding systems in that it displays three words rather than strings of numbers or letters which, it is suggested, significantly reduces the risk of transcription error.

what3words
what3words Limited
Founded2013 (2013)
Founders
HeadquartersGreat Western Studios,
London
Websitewhat3words.com

What3words has a website, apps for iOS and Android, and an API that enables bidirectional conversion between what3words addresses and latitude/longitude coordinates. As the system relies on a fixed algorithm rather than a large database of every location on earth, it works on devices with limited storage and no Internet connection.

History

Founded by Chris Sheldrick, Jack Waley-Cohen, Mohan Ganesalingam, and Michael Dent, what3words was launched in July 2013.[2][3] Sheldrick and Ganesalingam originally conceived the idea after Sheldrick struggled to get equipment and bands to musical event locations on time due to inadequate address information, while working as a concert organiser.[4] The company was incorporated in March 2013[5] and a patent application for the core technology filed in April 2013.[6] In November 2013, what3words raised US$500,000 of seed funding;[7]

Following initial unsuccessful attempts to become profitable as a consumer-focused offering, What3words switched to a business-to-business model.[8] In January 2018, Mercedes-Benz bought approximately ten per cent of the company and announced support for what3words in future versions of the Mercedes-Benz User Experience infotainment and navigation system.[9] The A-Class, launched in May 2018, became the first vehicle in the world with what3words on board.[10]

In 2018 the company had a turnover of £274,000 and lost £11 million.[8] By January 2020 the company had reached 100 employees and raised over £50 million from investors.[8]

Design principles

What3words uses a grid of the world made up of 57 x1012 squares of 3 metres by 3 metres. Each square has been given an address composed of three words. The addresses are available in 43 languages according to the what3words online map (as of May 2020), and the addresses are not translations of the same words.[11][12]

Each what3words language uses a word-list of 25,000 words (40,000 in English, as it covers the sea as well as land). The lists have been manually filtered to take account of word length, distinctiveness, frequency, and ease of spelling and pronunciation, and to reduce potential for confusion, and remove offensive words.[13]

The what3words algorithm distributes similar-sounding three-word combinations around the world to enable both human and automated error-checking. The result is that if a three-word combination is entered slightly incorrectly and the result is still a valid what3words reference, the location will usually be so far away from the user's intended area that the error will be immediately obvious to both a user and an intelligent error-checking system.[14]

The what3words system uses a proprietary algorithm in combination with a limited database; the core technology is contained within a file of about 10 MB. The database is used to assign more memorable words to locations in urban areas.[6] What3words originally sold "OneWord" addresses, which were stored in a database for a yearly fee,[15] but this feature has been cancelled.[16]

According to Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy (an advertising agency) in an op-ed piece for the The Spectator, the advantages of what3words are memorability, error-detection, unambiguous nature of words for most everyday and non-technical uses, and voice input.[17]

Emergency services use
See also: Advanced Mobile Location

In February 2020 the system was used for the first time in Scotland by stranded walkers.[18] In the same month it was used for the first time in Australia to rescue a person.[19]

Intellectual property and standardization

Supporters of open standards criticise the what3words system for being controlled by a private business and the software for being patented and not freely usable.[20] That similar addresses are purposely far away from each other is seen by some as a disadvantage.[21]

The company has pursued an assertive policy of issuing copyright claims against individuals and organisations that have hosted or published files of the what3words algorithm or reverse-engineered source code that replicates the service's functionality, such as WhatFreeWords.[22] This has extended to removing comments on social media which refer to unauthorised versions.

Open standards advocate and technology expert Terence Eden questions the cultural neutrality of using words rather than the numbers generated by map co-ordinates. "Numbers are (mostly) culturally neutral." he said, "Words are not. Is mile.crazy.shade a respectful name for a war memorial? How about tribes.hurt.stumpy for a temple?" [23]

WhatFreeWords

A group of developers, who wish to stay anonymous, developed and released a free and open source implementation of the what3words algorithm under the name WhatFreeWords.[24] They provided implementations of the algorithm in JavaScript, Python, Go, and Rust, all being released under the CC0 license.[25] The whatfreewords.org website was subsequently taken down following a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take-down notice issued by What3words. A reverse-engineered encoding scheme and open source implementation was available on the website whatfreewords.net.[26]

Parody

The site has been parodied by others who have created services including What3Emojis[27] using emojis, What3Birds[28] using British birds, What3fucks[29] using swear words and What3Numbers[30] using OpenStreetMap tile identifiers.

Awards

See also

References
  1. Leatherdale, Duncan (15 August 2019). "What3words: The app that can save your life". BBC News. Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  2. "'What3Words' Wants To Replace Postcodes With Words – For The Entire Globe". HuffingtonPost. 2 July 2013.
  3. "Location-Pinpointing Startup what3words Sells 10,000+ OneWord Map-Pins In First Week". Techcrunch. 8 July 2016.
  4. Lanks, Belinda (11 October 2016). "This App Gives Even the Most Remote Spots on the Planet an Address". Magenta.as.
  5. "WHAT3WORDS LIMITED - Overview (free company information from Companies House)". Companies House.
  6. "A Method and Apparatus for Identifying and Communicating Locations". World Intellectual Property Organization.
  7. "Startup what3words gets USD 500,000 in seed round". Venture Capital Post.
  8. Sam Shead (15 January 2020). "A navigation startup pivots and grows, but profitability is still down the road". Busines Insider.
  9. "Why Daimler Invested in a Startup That Has Labeled the World With Unique Three-Word Addresses". Fortune. 11 January 2018.
  10. Brecht, Michael (5 April 2018). "What3words: Diese Ortungssoftware gibt es bald serienmäßig in Daimlers A-Klasse". Die Welt.
  11. "Online map (showing a point in the featureless Sahara desert; click on the gear icon for Settings and languages)". what3words. Retrieved 5 April 2019.
  12. Feng, Rebecca (11 June 2016). "Startup What3words Aims To Give Billions Of People One Thing They Don't Have: An Address". Forbes. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
  13. "How do you handle rude words?". what3words.
  14. "What if I spell or say a word incorrectly or get the words in the wrong order?". what3words.
  15. Lomas, Natasha (8 July 2013). "Location-Pinpointing Startup what3words Sells 10,000+ OneWord Map-Pins In First Week". TechCrunch.
  16. "Why can't I buy my own words or change some of the words?". what3words.
  17. Rory Sutherland (25 October 2014). "The best navigation idea I've seen since the Tube map". The Spectator. Archived from the original on 5 January 2015.
  18. "Walkerstime in trainers rescued in Ben Nevis blizzard". BBC News. BBC. 11 February 2020.
  19. Power, Julie (18 May 2020). "Three random words saved Cornelia on a cold wet day of bushwalking". Sydney Morning Herald.
  20. "What3words: 'Life-saving app' divides opinion". BBC News. 21 September 2019.
  21. "What3Words is quite a find". The Boston Globe. 1 July 2016.
  22. "DMCA takedown of code on Github". GitHub. 5 July 2016.
  23. "What3words: 'Life-saving app' divides opinion". BBC News. 20 September 2019. Retrieved 3 October 2020.
  24. "About - WhatFreeWords". whatfreewords.net. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  25. "FAQ - WhatFreeWords". whatfreewords.net. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  26. "WhatFreeWords". Archived from the original on 17 May 2020. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  27. "what3emojis". what3emojis.com.
  28. "Location Encoding Systems". checkmypostcode.uk. What3Birds...is a parody of the commercial What3Words system, which isn't suitable for this website as it doesn't have a published, open source algorithm. It does, though, work - every postcode on this website has a unique, three bird code. The list of birds was taken (in simplified form) from the British Ornithologists' Union's official list of birds recorded in Britain.
  29. http://www.what3fucks.com
  30. "what3numbers". Github.io.
  31. Diaz, Ann-Christine (26 June 2015). "What3Words Innovation Grand Prix Cannes – Special: Cannes Lions – Advertising Age". adage.com.
  32. "San Jose: Tech awards honor an array of laureates". Mercury News. 12 November 2015.
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