CEO of Tile/Life360 here - I made a meta comment but I'll call out that because all Life360 users now scan for Tiles, and we are on 1 in 8 phones in the US, our network is actually huge. The small network thing is a misperception. We bought Tile knowing we could supercharge their previously small network.
I was in the location data space. These guys got out completely. It was a big loss to the industry since they had great coverage. They definitely weren’t lying about that.
I'm a Tile owner (soon to be ex-owner), and I think your response is a little disingenuous. When Google announced recently they'd open up their Find My Device network to bluetooth trackers, I assumed for sure Tile would be on board. I was dismayed to discover Tile specifically has no plans to join the Android Find My Device network, unlike Chipolo and Pebblebee. So I switched to Pebblebee.
The Life360 network may be sizable but it's going to me nowhere close to the iOS or Android networks, and it's going to get a lot smaller with folks like me leaving. If Tile supported the Android Find My Device network I would have stayed.
I disagree. There's a clear disclaimer of who they are, and they're responding to a specific criticism.
Their comment at the top level also has that disclaimer and while it's written in a bit of a marketing tone, it adds substantive value to the discussion.
One major value of HN is that we get people who are actively involved in building various pieces of technology directly engaging with the community. When there's a strong disclosure of who they are, that's almost always a good thing. (Of course, some organisations don't encourage that disclosure and that's a little more ambiguous).
I think it's pretty fair to make this clarification and I don't fault a company for wanting to squash misinformation about their product. I found it to be a useful comment because I had no sense of the scale of the Tile network, and I did have an intuition that it was much smaller.
I have zero affiliation with Tile and I have never bought any device like this of any sort, but this is useful information to me as someone who has been the target of frequent bicycle theft.
The criticism I will agree with is that it does feel worded a with a bit of a corporate polished tone that does give that vibe. edit: I think it's largely the "supercharge" descriptor.
Like @RobertRies, I found this comment useful. I've never bought a Tile but now that I know they have this much penetration I'm somewhat more likely to. I also had not seen the other posts by GP, so don't find it redundant.
These trackers work by connecting to nearby phones, with the phone supplying GPS information and uploading it via its cell connection. So a Tile tracker will only get its location updated if someone with the Tile app is nearby, and since Tile users are relatively rare the tracking is only reliable in very busy places.
Apple and now Google trackers on the other hand build this functionality into the OS (or Google's near-OS bundle for Android), so if basically any phone comes within range of the tracker it will provide a location update.
> How does the tracking network size affect functionality?
Ability to actually find lost items. AirTags are so successful (in the US) because of the ubiquity of iPhones which are, effectively, constantly reporting on the location of detected devices. A smaller network of listening/reporting devices will not be as effective unless it happens to be very popular right in the area the device was lost.
The devices don't have any GPS. Instead, they have a unique ID that phones see, and report their location to Apple/Google/Tile. If the network is bigger/denser, then your devices is more likely to be detected, and detected more often.
