User-generated mapping tool CloudMade has raised $12.3 million in a Series B investment round, led by new investor Greyock Partners. Existing investor Sunstone Capital also participated in the round. The funding will be used to grow CloudMade’s map and geo-database, building out its developer platform and expanding its presence across mobile devices through apps and manufacturer partnerships.

CloudMade really picked up steam through its work on the OpenMap project, where users can build up map content as they would a wiki. Tapping into this network, users are able to view recommendations, discover content and venues, and add a layer of relevance to their physical location. The OpenMap efforts will continue to be central for CloudMade moving forward, as Sunstone parter Jorgen Smidt notes in the released statement;

“We’re pleased to continue our support for CloudMade and the OpenStreetMap initiative, which is disrupting the traditional mapping world with its crowd sourced approach and unique product offering. Having Greylock join the Series B round will not only accelerate the CloudMade proposition for the benefit of new customers and third-party developers, but will open doors to new strategic partnerships.”

Indeed, the user-generated content and sharing capacity of a centralized database can be a very powerful tool. It’s driving advertising, carving countless niches for search and game apps on mobile devices, and overall fueled the growth of social media consumerism. It’s the platform and the developer community CloudMade will now focus on, nurturing the creation of more tools that tap into its database.

Google and Microsoft Bing are the two major search tools that are pawing at localized data, with Twitter’s microblogging site able to immediately combine the social and local relevance of a user and their content delivery stream. The big search engines are incorporating social data into their query finders, while Twitter adds geo-tagged data to its social access points. Foursquare went straight for the jugular, combining all three aspects for a targeted advertising platform.

CloudMade has taken a different approach, starting with the users. First launched in 2004, the past year has brought a significant amount of growth the the CloudMade project. Initiated at a time when crowd-sourced mapping data was a cumbersome but curious way of sharing information, mobile devices and social media trends have helped to make this a more prevalent trend. Nevertheless, the time CloudMade has spent building up this database has enabled it to have monetization mechanisms already in place. This will help draw in the developers it needs, as the funding helps to develop the platform itself.

One area in which CloudMade saw a great deal of success was in Germany–the same country that brought a lawsuit against Google for its less-than-transparent StreetViews data-gathering methods. Interesting, then, that CloudMade was able to do so well with this demographic. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned in empowering consumers with their own data. This is the key to the more lucrative apps built around crowd-sourced mapping data–it’s amazing what users will do for the right incentives.