Whistle’s ‘Fitbit for dogs’ acquired by Mars Petcare | Hacker News Reader

Whistle’s ‘Fitbit for dogs’ acquired by Mars Petcare

techcrunch.com

15 pointsjmcgough15 comments

Fitbit for Dogs. Silicon Valley truly is solving Important Problems.

The detached condescension is a nice touch and par for the course around here but I can give an anecdote that explains their value prop a bit better.

My sister has a grown Australian Shepherd with a Whistle tracker and she rescued a younger Aussie last year during the record cold spell in the Midwest. She didn't have a tracker on the younger one yet and soon after she brought it home, it bolted out the door into her fenced-in yard, jumped their ~4 foot tall fence and ran off. Her and her boyfriend spent 3 days searching during below zero weather until someone found it dead on the side of a road about 5 miles from their house.

If they had a tracker on their rescue it'd still be alive today, so feel free to mock "unimportant problems" but they often have important consequences.

To be fair, that's more of a case for "GPS for Dogs". The use case described in the article comes off as quite a bit more frivolous:

> Whistle’s GPS Pet Tracker makes it easier to keep tabs on your pet’s fitness, with a collar that keeps track of steps. Know if your dog walker gave Fluffy a good workout, by checking in with Whistle’s connected app. Whistle’s activity trackers help you set your pet’s fitness goals, track progress and compare stats to other similar dogs.

Hence the danger of drive-by criticism. From the first paragraph on their website:

> Whistle GPS Pet Tracker combines the best on-collar GPS tracking device with a simple mobile app, putting your pet’s needs and location right at your fingertips whenever you need it. It’s also the first device and app system to combine location-tracking and smart activity monitoring into one simple experience.

The Tagg acquisition discussed in the TechCrunch article was to add GPS capability to the fitness tracker. Products that start 'frivolously' often develop into something more important.

Both of my dogs have the Whistle GPS. Whistle was originally only a fitness tracker. Last year they acquired the company Tagg which was exclusively GPS for dogs. After the acquisition, Whistle redeveloped the app and the underlying tracking service. Many Tagg users (myself included) felt like Whistle made the GPS capabilities worse at the expense of fitness tracking and social features.

In my opinion the criticism is valid. Whistle solved a dumb problem (fitness tracking for dogs) and made a dog GPS service worse.

"Silicon Valley" is not centrally planned, and thus cannot effectively stop unimportant projects. As a result we live in this terrible dystopia where some ruthless people make products that other people might want to buy, with no regard about whether it's an "Important Problem." It's almost as if -- and I'm afraid to even say it -- the world doesn't care about you or your important problem and the important product that's going to solve it. I'm afraid that it might be the case that there are people out there -- the kinds of people you and I would never want to know -- who like gadgets, like their dogs, and would like a gadget for their dog. Maybe, if all of Silicon Valley sticks together, we can fix it, so that instead they pay attention to whatever important product you're working on.

That's fine. It's just disappointing to be smacked in the face by the unenlightened hedonism the vast majority of people stumble through their lives in.

I enjoy the company of my dog. But he does not share my last name, and is not one of my children. The emotional transference onto our animals is one of the more strikingly depressing aspects of 21st century American culture.

I'm not going to argue that that is a completely asshole thing to say. But I wont sit here and be told that because people wanted the emotional hole in their life filled and found an animal to do it, that it's a natural to then want their animal to kept in peak physical form. Sometimes people want stupid shit. When that happens to me, I hope some one with a glib, sarcastic tone tells me to stop it, and focus on helping those addicted to opioids and stuck in purgatory in jail because the courts are too busy to try their case and bring resolution.

>the world doesn't care about you or your important problem and the important product that's going to solve it

Funny that you lobby on behalf of gadget-loving dog owners, but actively rail against someone who points out that there are more important issues. I'm not sure what motivates that line of reasoning. Commitment to frivolity?

Sure, you can say that these companies are just making products that people are willing to buy. But, that's just another part of the same problem.

>the world doesn't care about you or your important problem and the important product that's going to solve it

Interesting that people lobby on behalf of gadget-loving dog owners, but actively rail against someone who points out that there are more important issues facing humanity. I'm not sure what motivates that kind of passion.

Sure, we can say that these companies are just making products that people are willing to buy. But, that's just another part of the same problem.

There has long been criticism of the relative dearth of meaningful projects in SV. OP is not the first to notice and waving him/her off doesn't improve the plight of humanity.

Interestingly enough American pets are more overweight/obese on average than their Human masters with more than 50% of cats and dogs being overweight or obese [1]. People care deeply about their pets and consider them to be part of their family. This is why people will spend thousands of dollars on vet bills and why pet insurance exists. If you can get people to care as much about their pets health as their own, which is already true, this could be a great investment. The problem is raising awareness that most pets are overweight and that they need to eat healthy and exercise just as much as people do. Mars just has to lead a pet health awareness campaign and then sales will take off.

[1] http://www.petobesityprevention.org/2012-national-pet-obesit...

It's a non-HIPAA controlled platform where we can try out things like pulse & respiration monitoring without worrying about FDA regulations that make developing medical devices a slow process. That particular dog tracker might not do it but some of them do: http://petpace.com/

We must stop the Martians from theft of our acoustic technology!

... was my first thought, as I had no idea who either Whistle or Mars were.

I guess I'm old and terminally unhip. Or not in the target market.

You didn't think of Mars candy? I was wondering who the hell Whistle was, though, and what they could do for candy.

Might have been a probe left in Mars orbit. Phobos, Deimos, and Whistle has a nice ring to it.

(On the the gripping hand, I believe 'Crunch' is a trademarked candy name.)

Wait, it isn't April 1st yet? I'm confused?

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