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Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how

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Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.

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Speaker 1: I am your host, senior writer Jonathan Strickland with how

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Speaker 1: stuff Works dot Com and on many episodes of tech Stuff,

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Speaker 1: I like to look at companies that are decades old,

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Speaker 1: or even more than a century old in some cases.

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Speaker 1: But this time I'm going to take a look at

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Speaker 1: a company that just turned ten not too long ago,

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Speaker 1: and I'm talking about Fitbit. And really I'm gonna focus

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Speaker 1: both on the company itself and the technology it creates.

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Speaker 1: So you're gonna get both kind of a history and

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Speaker 1: evolution of the company, but also how does that technology

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Speaker 1: actually work. It's kind of marrying two different styles of

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Speaker 1: tech stuff in one delicious tech stuff package of goodness.

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Speaker 1: So this story begins back in two thousand seven, and

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Speaker 1: that is when two guys, one named James Park and

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Speaker 1: one named Eric Friedman, decided that they were going to

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Speaker 1: launch a company with the intent to produce fitness trackers,

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Speaker 1: essentially a pedometer on steroids, something that could give lots

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Speaker 1: of feedback to a person who was interested in getting fit.

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Speaker 1: But to be fair, all stories really have more of

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Speaker 1: a preamble than that, right, it's not just hey, today,

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Speaker 1: we decided to make a company. You have to figure out, well,

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Speaker 1: what led up to that? Well, James Park attended Harvard.

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Speaker 1: He was studying computer science, but he dropped out. He

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Speaker 1: didn't actually graduate from Harvard, he didn't earn a degree there.

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Speaker 1: After dropping out, he worked for the company Morgan Stanley

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Speaker 1: and he worked there for about a year. And then

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Speaker 1: Eric Friedman, he was actually at Yale. He got a

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Speaker 1: graduate and postgraduate degrees actually from Yale. He was studying

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Speaker 1: computer science. They are, and the two of them co

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Speaker 1: founded a company called Epis Technologies, and I'm guessing you

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Speaker 1: probably never heard of it because it didn't last very long.

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Speaker 1: Their focus was to create products to facilitate business to

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Speaker 1: business transactions. So, in other words, um, your ordinary consumers

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Speaker 1: or customers would never really come into contact with this

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Speaker 1: particular company. It wasn't marketing stuff for the average consumer.

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Speaker 1: This was for big companies and the transactions they make

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Speaker 1: with each other. Very different world than just going to

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Speaker 1: a store and buying a product. Right. Venture capitalists invested

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Speaker 1: a couple of million dollars in this technology. However, the

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Speaker 1: company just never found its footing. It eventually failed and

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Speaker 1: Parks said that he felt that his inexperience in large

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Speaker 1: part contributed to that failure, but that the failure itself

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Speaker 1: served as a very valuable learning experience for him and

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Speaker 1: for Freedom, and that they were able to take that

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Speaker 1: negative experience and learn from it and attempt something new.

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Speaker 1: So there might have been some valuable but harsh lessons

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Speaker 1: learned at that point. Anyway, the two of them and

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Speaker 1: a couple of other alumni from a PSC Technologies decided

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Speaker 1: to go on an entirely different direction with a brand

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Speaker 1: new company. They created a new venture called wind Up Labs,

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Speaker 1: and this time they were taking aim at online photo

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Speaker 1: editing and sharing using peer to peer technology. So this

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Speaker 1: happened around two thousand two. UH. They got to work

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Speaker 1: developing the tools you would need to do editing work

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Speaker 1: online and to use this peer to peer technology to

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Speaker 1: facilitate it, and it was successful enough for larger companies

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Speaker 1: to actually take notice of them. And one of those

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Speaker 1: larger companies was c net. So you're probably familiar with SEEN.

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Speaker 1: They have a lot of different UH branches. The one

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Speaker 1: that I'm familiar with is their website with their reviews

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Speaker 1: and their technology news. I know a couple of people

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Speaker 1: who work there, but they also do other stuff as well,

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Speaker 1: and one of the things they wanted to invest in

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Speaker 1: was this photo editing suite, so they acquired wind Up Labs.

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Speaker 1: They actually made a bid and then took ownership of

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Speaker 1: the company, and both Park and Freedman went on to

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Speaker 1: work for c net uh, becoming heads of various departments

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Speaker 1: within c NEET, and they became further entrenched in the

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Speaker 1: world of technology. Flash forward to two thousand and six,

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Speaker 1: another big company released a brand new product that got

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Speaker 1: both Park and Freedman kind of excited, something that they

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Speaker 1: had not really seen before that they felt had a

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Speaker 1: lot of value. That company was a little company called Nintendo,

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Speaker 1: and the product was the Wei video game console. Really,

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Speaker 1: they were very interested in the Wei controllers, the Wei

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Speaker 1: motes because they had all these motion sensors in them.

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Speaker 1: We were now entering into an era where these motion

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Speaker 1: sensors were getting very small and relatively inexpensive, so you

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Speaker 1: could incorporate them into totally new types of technology. You know,

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Speaker 1: before they were larger, they were more expensive, they were

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Speaker 1: limited in what you can do with them. But now

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Speaker 1: because manufacturing processes had improved and you're looking at the

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Speaker 1: economies of scale. They were suddenly a component that you

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Speaker 1: could fit another stuff. And we started seeing this across

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Speaker 1: all sorts of different products, including smartphones. We started seeing

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Speaker 1: those kind of technologies incorporated there. Well. They thought that

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Speaker 1: this we mote motion sensor technology was really revolutionary. But

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Speaker 1: they thought, this is a home console. What if we

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Speaker 1: could take this capability and put it into a more

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Speaker 1: portable device, and maybe it has a different aim and

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Speaker 1: video games. And that got them thinking, and eventually they

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Speaker 1: came to this idea of a fitness tracker that now

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Speaker 1: that you could get accelerometers and other types of sensors

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Speaker 1: to a small enough form factor and make them cheap enough,

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Speaker 1: you could pair them with some microprocessors and have a

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Speaker 1: really robust activity tracker. So they decided that this would

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Speaker 1: leave pedometers in the dust. It would set a new market,

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Speaker 1: and they left c Net in two thousand seven to

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Speaker 1: form a new company and they called it Fitbit. Now

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Speaker 1: that when they made this company, they didn't have any

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Speaker 1: products to show off yet. They had not built anything,

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Speaker 1: they hadn't designed anything. They just had an idea. They

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Speaker 1: invested their own money, and they also had friends and

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Speaker 1: family and and former co workers and former clients also

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Speaker 1: invested in their early start up, and they raised about

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Speaker 1: four hundred thousand dollars, which originally they thought would be

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Speaker 1: enough to get them to the point where they could

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Speaker 1: bringing a product to market. Later fundraising efforts got them

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Speaker 1: further once they realized that four thousand dollars was not

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Speaker 1: going to be enough, But that was a little bit

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Speaker 1: further down the line. They had a long way to

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Speaker 1: go before they actually had a physical product they could

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Speaker 1: show off. Their ideas. Sound sounded really good. They were

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Speaker 1: really sound ideas, but neither co founder had any experience

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Speaker 1: in the manufacturing world, so neither of them knew anything

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Speaker 1: about product development or actually taking an idea and making

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Speaker 1: a physical thing out of it, and as it turns out,

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Speaker 1: that's really hard to do. They had to make a

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Speaker 1: working prototype in order to show it off to some

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Speaker 1: potential investors and also potential customers. So the original fitbit

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Speaker 1: prototype didn't look very special. It was some circuitry in

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Speaker 1: a little wooden box. I think it was even made

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Speaker 1: of balsa would The idea seemed really special, though, and

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Speaker 1: Park and Freedmen were determined to make it work, so

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Speaker 1: they needed to develop the product that could be lightweight

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Speaker 1: because you wanted to be able to wear it on

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Speaker 1: your body. They wanted it to be very energy efficient

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Speaker 1: because you don't want to have to recharge it constantly.

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Speaker 1: They wanted to aim for a price point of around

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Speaker 1: in the US dollars. That is, the original fitbit tracker

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Speaker 1: that they eventually developed was a clip on device. You

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Speaker 1: could clip it on pocket or a lot of the

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Speaker 1: ladies would clip it on a bra strap or something

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Speaker 1: along those lines. Um And it was kind of like

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Speaker 1: a high tech clothes pin almost. So it had a

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Speaker 1: very small, oh lead display, uh you know, organic led display,

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Speaker 1: and that could show you how many steps you took.

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Speaker 1: Give me a little indicator had little footprints on it too.

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Speaker 1: I'm looking at the camera that I'm talking to. I'm

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Speaker 1: live streaming this particular episode, and I'm acting like it's

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Speaker 1: actually another person right there. So that's interesting. But at

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Speaker 1: any rate, the this little screen and show you the

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Speaker 1: number of steps you took. And it also had a

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Speaker 1: Bluetooth low energy transmitter incorporated in the device in order

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Speaker 1: to send information to a sinking station sinking as in synchronization,

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Speaker 1: not as in sinking under the water, and you would

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Speaker 1: plug that into a computer, so your device would sink

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Speaker 1: whenever you got within a certain range uh and it

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Speaker 1: would do so multiple times over the course of a day,

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Speaker 1: so maybe every like fifteen to twenty minutes it would update,

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Speaker 1: and then you could view stats on your computer screen.

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Speaker 1: Later on, with smartphones became ubiquitous and a lot of

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Speaker 1: apps were developed for the fitbit, you could offload that

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Speaker 1: to a smartphone and just use a Bluetooth connection between

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Speaker 1: a device and your smartphone to send that information. But

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Speaker 1: either way, the point was you could then view more

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Speaker 1: robust information on a dashboard, either on your computer or

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Speaker 1: later on on your smartphone, and it would give you

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Speaker 1: a little bit better of an idea of of what

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Speaker 1: your activity actually meant. Because a predometer can tell you

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Speaker 1: roughly how many steps you took, but fitbits value proposition

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Speaker 1: was that it could do more than that. So while

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Speaker 1: the fitbit tracker could estimate the number of steps you

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Speaker 1: were taking, that one of the things that this dashboard

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Speaker 1: could do is estimate how many calories you were burning

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Speaker 1: based upon the nature and duration of the movement you

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Speaker 1: were making, and it did this by collecting information from

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Speaker 1: a three axis accelerometer and more on that in a

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Speaker 1: little bit. I'll actually explain how three axes accelerometers work. Really,

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Speaker 1: I should say just a three axis accelerometers work. And

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Speaker 1: this was really what was compelling about their approach was

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Speaker 1: that wasn't just a physical product that they were marketing.

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Speaker 1: It was this whole marriage between software and hardware that

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Speaker 1: together made it a product that people might want and

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Speaker 1: would find compelling uses for. Like this whole uh new

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Speaker 1: industry of activity tracking, quantifying your activity in a way

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Speaker 1: that makes sense, so that you could perhaps set goals

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Speaker 1: saying I want to hit a certain milestone today, or

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Speaker 1: you could just see what trends were for a week

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Speaker 1: and maybe there were things that you needed to adjust.

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Speaker 1: It was a new idea really that you would be

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Speaker 1: able to gather that much information and have it presented

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Speaker 1: to you in a way that made sense, and that,

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Speaker 1: I think, more than just the tracker itself, is what

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Speaker 1: got people really interested. So let's talk about how this

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Speaker 1: hardware works. Will begin with what is arguably the most

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Speaker 1: important element in fitbit technology, which is the three axis accelerometer. Uh.

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Speaker 1: There are of course a lot of other components inside fitbits,

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Speaker 1: and it also depends upon which fit bit model you're

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Speaker 1: talking about because Fitbit offers a ton of different products,

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Speaker 1: and some of them are more simple, and some of

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Speaker 1: them are have all the bells and whistles. Figuratively speaking,

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Speaker 1: I don't think any of Fitbit's current products actually have

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Speaker 1: physical bells or whistles, So I apologize if I got

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Speaker 1: your hopes up. So, the three axis accelerometer is an

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Speaker 1: interesting thing. Uh It It detects changes in motion. That's

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Speaker 1: what accelerometers do. They detect changes in acceleration, and acceleration

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Speaker 1: is a vector quantity, right, It has two components. It

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Speaker 1: has a direction, and it has a magnitude. So an

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Speaker 1: accelerometer can detect a change in the direction of motion

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Speaker 1: or a change in the magnitude of motion, and a

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Speaker 1: single axis accelerometer can only tell the difference in a

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Speaker 1: change in direction along one axis. So upper down is

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Speaker 1: an axis. If you have a single access accelerometer and

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Speaker 1: it's oriented in the up down position, it can only

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Speaker 1: detect changes in direction that that an impact up or down.

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Speaker 1: It cannot detect left or right. So uh, three axis

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Speaker 1: means that there are three axis of directions that you're

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Speaker 1: talking about, essentially up, down, left, right, and forward backward.

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Speaker 1: So you can detect changes in motion and all of

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Speaker 1: these different axes. The accelerometers inside fitbits are specific types.

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Speaker 1: They're called MEMS accelerometers m E m S, and that's

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Speaker 1: actually an acronym. It stands for micro electro mechanical systems.

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Speaker 1: And this is the fascinating thing to me. These are

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Speaker 1: very very tiny. They're they're like, it looks like a

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Speaker 1: regular little micro chip, like a microprocessor chip, but they

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Speaker 1: actually have tiny moving parts inside of them. The accelerometers

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Speaker 1: are actually based upon physical motion. Uh. And the name

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Speaker 1: tells you all the basics you need to know. Micro

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Speaker 1: means we're talking wicked small here. Um, that means they're tiny.

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Speaker 1: If you're not from Boston, you don't know what wicked

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Speaker 1: small means. It means tiny. Electro of course, means that

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Speaker 1: you have some sort of electrical or electro magnetic component

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Speaker 1: to it. And mechanical tells you that, yeah, we're talking

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Speaker 1: about moving parts here. It's just not you know, not

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Speaker 1: just electrons zipping around. They're actually tiny little movement moving

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Speaker 1: elements to this thing. So let's start with a simple

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Speaker 1: single access accelerometer. And again by access, we're talking about

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Speaker 1: a specific set of directions. Um, this is all with

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Speaker 1: respect to the accelerometers orientation. So let's say we've got

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Speaker 1: a macro sized single access accelerometer sitting on the table.

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Speaker 1: This is easier to envision. It can measure accelerator accelerative

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Speaker 1: forces that are going up or down, but not left

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Speaker 1: or right, or forward or backward, because it's again single access.

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Speaker 1: But the way it works is that you've got a

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Speaker 1: b ace, which in the micro scale we would call

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Speaker 1: a substrate. We'll just say it's the surface of a

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Speaker 1: table in this case. Then you would have a spring,

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Speaker 1: a pretty stiff spring, not not like a slinky, but

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Speaker 1: more like maybe something you would find in a shock absorber.

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Speaker 1: Attached to the spring, you would have some sort of

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Speaker 1: element that would have flat protrusions extending from the sides.

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Speaker 1: So imagine like a cylinder, and along the length of

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Speaker 1: the cylinder you've got these flat protrusions their plates, is

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Speaker 1: what they're called. These are movable plates because they're on

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Speaker 1: the cylinder, which itself is on a spring. So an

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Speaker 1: emotion on the spring will make the cylinder go up

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Speaker 1: and down, which means the plates, which are attached to

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Speaker 1: the cylinder will also go up or down. Now, around

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Speaker 1: this cylinder You've got some fixed plates mounted to a

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Speaker 1: steady frame, so the frame does not move, the frame

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Speaker 1: stays stable, but those plates sandwich the moving plates. So

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Speaker 1: a moving plate would slide between two fixed plates, and

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Speaker 1: then you apply of different voltages to each pair of

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Speaker 1: fixed plates, so you've got a difference in voltage. They're

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Speaker 1: essentially capacitors in this case, they're building up a voltage

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Speaker 1: differential between two plates. You've got this moving plate that's

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Speaker 1: in between the two. Any motion that you transfer to

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Speaker 1: that spring will they be transferred to the cylinder, and

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Speaker 1: thus the moving plates they'll move up and down. As

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Speaker 1: they move up and down, that moving plate is going

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Speaker 1: to get closer to the top plate, and then further

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Speaker 1: away and closer to the bottom plate, and then further away.

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Speaker 1: So as it moves up and down and gets closer

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Speaker 1: and further away from these these fixed plates, it actually

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Speaker 1: affects the capacitive value between the two. This difference in

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Speaker 1: capacity value is is interpreted by the accelerometer as a

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Speaker 1: change in acceleration. And I realized that this is kind

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Speaker 1: of a difficult thing to to just imagine that. I'm

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Speaker 1: explaining it as best I can, but without the element

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Speaker 1: of visuals. It is pretty tricky. So maybe what I

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Speaker 1: can do is, um, I'll explain it analogy. I love analogies.

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Speaker 1: And uh, it was lunchtime not too long ago here

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Speaker 1: in Atlanta, Georgia. So I'm going to talk about sandwich.

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Speaker 1: Imagine a really delicious veggie burger, and they do exist.

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Speaker 1: It's easy to find a bad one, but trust me,

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Speaker 1: the good ones are out there too. Now, imagine you've

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Speaker 1: got a bottom bun sitting on a table, hovering, as

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Speaker 1: if by magic. About two inches above that bun is

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Speaker 1: a veggie patty, and it is in fact delicious, but

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Speaker 1: you can't eat it yet because I need it for

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Speaker 1: this analogy. Hovering about two inches above that is the

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Speaker 1: top bun. So you've got some space between the top bun,

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Speaker 1: the veggie patty, and the bottom bun. Now, the two

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Speaker 1: buns are fixed in space and time. Not even the

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Speaker 1: Juggernaut himself could move the two buns. They are going

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Speaker 1: to remain in the positions they are in until the

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Speaker 1: universe itself burns out. But the veggie patty can move

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Speaker 1: up and down. It has that freedom of movement. So

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Speaker 1: any motion to the table is going to make that

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Speaker 1: veggie Patty either get closer to the top bun or

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Speaker 1: the bottom bun. And that's what I'm talking about. It's

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Speaker 1: it's very similar with an accelerometer, except instead of veggie burger,

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Speaker 1: you've got these moving plates and fixed plates, and instead

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Speaker 1: of deliciousness, you have a capacitive value based upon a

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Speaker 1: voltage differential between two plates. Simple right. Anyway, you have

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Speaker 1: processors that can take that data, that change in the

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Speaker 1: capacitive value and interpret it as acceleration, and based upon

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Speaker 1: the speed of the change and the magnitude of the change,

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Speaker 1: it can make some guesses as to how much accelerative

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Speaker 1: force is being applied. So if you've ever used a

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Speaker 1: fitness tracker that could tell the difference between when you

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Speaker 1: were walking versus when you might be typing on a

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Speaker 1: keyboard or when you're jogging down the street, it's because

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Speaker 1: the accelerometer is able to interpret these differences and then

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Speaker 1: present that information in a way that makes sense to you.

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Speaker 1: And it's all about just looking at the math of

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Speaker 1: the difference of that capacitive value, which to me is

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Speaker 1: it's almost akin to magic. I'm about to go all

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Speaker 1: Arthur C. Clark in here. So that's a basic single

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Speaker 1: access accelerometer, and the same thing is happening inside the

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Speaker 1: sensors on the fitbit, only we're talking about a much

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Speaker 1: much much smaller accelerometer, right, We're talking micro level, not

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Speaker 1: macro level. And again, they don't use single axis accelerometers

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Speaker 1: because that would only detect a change in acceleration along

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Speaker 1: one axis. They use three axis accelerometers. So how are

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Speaker 1: those different, Well, they're not different. You just get three

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Speaker 1: single axis accelerometers and then you orient them so that

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Speaker 1: they have these ninety degree changes, so that you've got

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Speaker 1: one that's aligned up and down, one that's the line

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Speaker 1: left and right, and one that's aligned front to back,

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Speaker 1: and they're all next to each other. And it doesn't

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Speaker 1: you know, they're not always going to be. This is vertical,

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Speaker 1: this is horizontal, and this is your your Z axis

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Speaker 1: because it all depends upon the orientation of the fitbit itself. Right,

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Speaker 1: Sometimes i might have my arm way up in the air,

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Speaker 1: waving it around as if in fact I just did

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Speaker 1: not care. But other times I'm gonna be just hauling

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Speaker 1: as fast as I can down the highway while the

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Speaker 1: T one thousand is chasing me down. And the important

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Speaker 1: thing is these accelerometers have to uh, detect that motion

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Speaker 1: no matter what orientation my arm might be in. That's

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Speaker 1: why you go with the three axis. It's much more

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Speaker 1: accurate than a single access accelerometer. And I love the

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Speaker 1: fact that this technology is built on the basis of

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Speaker 1: motion because it means that you yourself can go out

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Speaker 1: and build an accelerometer if you want to. You can

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Speaker 1: build a simple one which would really just give you

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Speaker 1: an indication of changes to acceleration based upon the movement

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Speaker 1: of a mass at the end of a spring. But

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Speaker 1: that's technically kind of an accelerometer doesn't really give you

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Speaker 1: any value, So I would argue that perhaps you can't

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Speaker 1: really call an accelerometer. It's almost more of a seizmometer.

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Speaker 1: But it's still kind of cool. Uh. But yeah, with

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Speaker 1: with some springs and a few other pieces of equipment,

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Speaker 1: you could make a macro sized accelerometer that works on

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Speaker 1: the exact same principle as these very tiny ones that

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Speaker 1: you find in fitbit, And then you can marvel and

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Speaker 1: the fact that it still works at the micro scale.

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Speaker 1: Go ahead, marvel. You can actually marvel all the way

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Speaker 1: through the next bit because it's time to take a

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Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. All right, so let's

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Speaker 1: talk about other stuff with the fitbit. You know, other

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Speaker 1: elements in UH in the fitbit handle actual processing of information.

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Speaker 1: So you've got the sensor that's gathering information, the the

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Speaker 1: three axis accelerometer. It's it's pulling info in, but that

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Speaker 1: needs to be processed, right, It's just kind of raw data.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't really have any meaning to it. So we

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Speaker 1: then have the other processors to kind of turn that

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Speaker 1: into more interesting information that has relevance to us as users.

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Speaker 1: Then you've got the low energy Bluetooth transmitter, and that

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Speaker 1: is what allows the the fitbit to communicate with other

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Speaker 1: devices like smartphones and sinking stations again synchronization stations UH.

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Speaker 1: And they use low energy bluetooth because as you would imagine,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't require that much energy to operate. It's sending

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Speaker 1: very small amounts of data, so it's not like it's

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Speaker 1: having to transmit a constant stream of information. It's just

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Speaker 1: little packets of information, so it doesn't take a whole

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Speaker 1: lot of power to do it, and that means that

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Speaker 1: it's less of a drain on battery life because that's

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Speaker 1: really important with an activity tracker. You don't. You don't

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Speaker 1: want to have to take it off at the end

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Speaker 1: of every day and recharge it, especially one like the

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Speaker 1: fitbit that's supposed to also track how well you sleep.

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Speaker 1: If you're supposed to wear it essentially twenty four hours

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Speaker 1: until you actually absolutely have to charge it, you want

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Speaker 1: to maximize that battery life. So that was one way

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Speaker 1: they could do it was using this low energy Bluetooth approach.

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Speaker 1: And I've talked about low too, low energy Bluetooth and

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00:24:02,400 --> 00:24:04,600
Speaker 1: other podcasts, So if you want to go back to

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Speaker 1: Tech Stuff archives, you can find me explaining that technology

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Speaker 1: a little bit more. These days, Uh, you know, you're

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Speaker 1: more likely to use a smartphone than a synchronize kind

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Speaker 1: of station type device that plugs in via USB to

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Speaker 1: your computer. You might still do that. I did that

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Speaker 1: with my old fitbit, but these days now I just

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Speaker 1: used my smartphone essentially is the computer in my pocket.

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Speaker 1: So um. But when they first launched Fitbit, smartphones were

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Speaker 1: not really a big thing yet. Remember they got together

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Speaker 1: to work on Fitbit in two thousand seven. That's the

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Speaker 1: same year that Apple debuted the iPhone. So to me,

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Speaker 1: that is the beginning of the era of the smartphone age.

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Speaker 1: Even though there were other phones that could technically be

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Speaker 1: called smartphones before the iPhone, it was the iPhone that

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Speaker 1: captured the public imagination so that people besides just the

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Speaker 1: the tech geeks like my elf, sat up and said, Oh,

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00:25:01,920 --> 00:25:05,320
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. I want one of those now. It

400
00:25:05,359 --> 00:25:08,359
Speaker 1: was actually that that bluetooth transmitter that gave them some

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00:25:08,480 --> 00:25:12,480
Speaker 1: early problems. If you read review our interviews with the

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Speaker 1: founders of Fitbit, they'd say that their company nearly died

403
00:25:16,520 --> 00:25:22,080
Speaker 1: seven times. They had seven different crises that almost killed

404
00:25:22,119 --> 00:25:25,280
Speaker 1: off their company in that that first year, and one

405
00:25:25,320 --> 00:25:27,320
Speaker 1: of them was they found that they were having this

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00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:31,359
Speaker 1: transmitter problem that the device wasn't able to sink properly.

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00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:34,720
Speaker 1: Because it wasn't able to transmit information properly, they weren't

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Speaker 1: getting any data off of the transmitter, and they found

409
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:40,679
Speaker 1: out it was an antenna issue, and they fixed it

410
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:45,160
Speaker 1: by putting some foam behind the antenna, like propping it up,

411
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:49,159
Speaker 1: which I can identify with. I'm old enough that I

412
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Speaker 1: remember when we would get all of our television programming

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Speaker 1: over the air, and I was the official. Hey moved

414
00:25:55,320 --> 00:25:58,280
Speaker 1: the antenna a quarter inch to the left so that

415
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:00,199
Speaker 1: we can get I love Lucy on the e V

416
00:26:01,840 --> 00:26:06,880
Speaker 1: So I was the piece of foam in my family anyway. Uh.

417
00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:10,000
Speaker 1: These were the kind of like CLUEG solutions they had

418
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:13,080
Speaker 1: to go with early on just to get their their

419
00:26:13,080 --> 00:26:16,200
Speaker 1: technology working. But the important thing was it actually did

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Speaker 1: make it work. Now, while their proof of concept was working,

421
00:26:20,680 --> 00:26:23,880
Speaker 1: they discovered that that food dollars just was not going

422
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Speaker 1: to be nearly enough to bring a product to market.

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Speaker 1: They had underestimated how incredibly challenging it is to get

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Speaker 1: into manufacturing. It requires creating a supply chain. You have

425
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Speaker 1: to figure out who's going to supply the various little

426
00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:43,520
Speaker 1: components that together make your product. You have to form

427
00:26:43,600 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 1: relationships with the various suppliers of microchips and sensors. You

428
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:50,040
Speaker 1: have to figure out what is the form factor of

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00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:52,119
Speaker 1: your product going to look like, like what is it

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Speaker 1: actually going to how's the design going to be, and

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00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:57,840
Speaker 1: who's gonna make it, who's gonna cast the molds, who's

432
00:26:57,840 --> 00:27:00,440
Speaker 1: going to produce the plastic. Uh. This is where I

433
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:02,640
Speaker 1: would talk about China a bit, because they had to

434
00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:05,040
Speaker 1: look at Chinese suppliers. That was one of the ways

435
00:27:05,040 --> 00:27:07,639
Speaker 1: to keep costs down is that and that's what a

436
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:10,000
Speaker 1: lot of electronics companies do they look to China to

437
00:27:10,040 --> 00:27:13,960
Speaker 1: produce the little various components that are then assembled together

438
00:27:14,000 --> 00:27:16,800
Speaker 1: and then sold in other parts of the world. So

439
00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:21,520
Speaker 1: they realized that they just did not have the money

440
00:27:21,560 --> 00:27:25,000
Speaker 1: to go through this whole process. They needed more, so

441
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:28,879
Speaker 1: they held some more rounds of venture capital fundraising, and

442
00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:31,800
Speaker 1: they raised some quite a bit of money, like more

443
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:34,160
Speaker 1: than a couple of million, because by now people were

444
00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:36,399
Speaker 1: starting to pay attention to what it was they were

445
00:27:36,440 --> 00:27:39,719
Speaker 1: working on. But really, I think the turning point in

446
00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:42,960
Speaker 1: that early time happened in September two thousand eight. So

447
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:45,119
Speaker 1: they got together in two thousand seven, they started working

448
00:27:45,119 --> 00:27:49,440
Speaker 1: on their idea. September two eight, they got an opportunity

449
00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:52,640
Speaker 1: to show off that idea, show off a prototype, and

450
00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 1: explain their sales pitch, and they did an event called

451
00:27:57,200 --> 00:28:01,199
Speaker 1: tech Crunch fifty uh So tech Crunch they're known for

452
00:28:01,280 --> 00:28:04,199
Speaker 1: lots of stuff. They're they're great with technology news, but

453
00:28:04,240 --> 00:28:09,080
Speaker 1: they also are really a launch point for startups. They

454
00:28:09,119 --> 00:28:13,720
Speaker 1: give startups an opportunity to meet with people, to express

455
00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:15,880
Speaker 1: what it is they are working on and to try

456
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:18,160
Speaker 1: and see if there's any interest or support out there

457
00:28:18,560 --> 00:28:23,000
Speaker 1: to continue the work. So tech Crunch fifty was a

458
00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:25,720
Speaker 1: huge deal for these guys to be involved with it,

459
00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:31,159
Speaker 1: and they landed a spot in that two thousand eight event. Now,

460
00:28:31,800 --> 00:28:37,160
Speaker 1: going into it, they weren't exactly overwhelmed with optimism. In fact,

461
00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:40,520
Speaker 1: Freedman had said, I don't think more than five people

462
00:28:40,560 --> 00:28:43,200
Speaker 1: will be stupid enough to give us their credit card,

463
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:48,760
Speaker 1: a somewhat cynical statement, and part of wasn't a whole

464
00:28:48,800 --> 00:28:51,720
Speaker 1: lot better. He said, Nah, you're wrong, We'll get way

465
00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:55,280
Speaker 1: more than five. I bet we'll get fifty orders five zero.

466
00:28:56,000 --> 00:29:00,600
Speaker 1: Turned out that they were grossly underestimating the appeal of

467
00:29:00,640 --> 00:29:04,600
Speaker 1: this Fitbit product. By the end of the day after

468
00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:08,400
Speaker 1: they had presented their idea, they had two thousand pre orders,

469
00:29:09,560 --> 00:29:11,640
Speaker 1: these for two guys who had not yet figured out

470
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:14,520
Speaker 1: how they were going to produce these these products. They

471
00:29:14,880 --> 00:29:17,080
Speaker 1: knew how it was gonna work, they had an idea

472
00:29:17,120 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 1: of what it needed to look like, but they did

473
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:22,560
Speaker 1: not have a manufacturing process in place yet to produce

474
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:25,520
Speaker 1: two thousand. It did not help that Park had said

475
00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:31,720
Speaker 1: that they would have the orders out by Christmas. Now

476
00:29:32,640 --> 00:29:37,200
Speaker 1: the first Fitbit trackers, the original product from Fitbit was

477
00:29:37,240 --> 00:29:39,920
Speaker 1: called the Tracker. There was that little clothes pin, thing

478
00:29:39,960 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 1: that could clip onto a pocket or whatever. They shipped

479
00:29:44,640 --> 00:29:49,720
Speaker 1: in December two thousand nine, so they presented in September

480
00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:53,200
Speaker 1: two eight. James Park says they'll be out in time

481
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:57,440
Speaker 1: for Christmas, and they shipped December two thousand nine, and

482
00:29:57,520 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 1: James Park said, well, in my defense, I never said

483
00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:06,440
Speaker 1: wh Christmas. Whack at ashrak. Uh. Yeah, it was kind

484
00:30:06,440 --> 00:30:11,800
Speaker 1: of jokingly saying, yeah, we're a year late, but it

485
00:30:11,840 --> 00:30:16,720
Speaker 1: but it came out. And honestly, that delay really illustrates

486
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:20,160
Speaker 1: what I was saying earlier that manufacturing is hard. It

487
00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:24,640
Speaker 1: is difficult. It's it's something that even big companies struggle with.

488
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:26,760
Speaker 1: And these are big companies that have been around for

489
00:30:26,760 --> 00:30:30,720
Speaker 1: for decades and they're in the business of making consumer electronics.

490
00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 1: It's challenging for them and they've been doing it for decades.

491
00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:37,680
Speaker 1: For two guys who had started up this company, it

492
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:42,720
Speaker 1: was way more challenging. So once you are able to

493
00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:47,400
Speaker 1: crack that manufacturing problem, which is again a non trivial task,

494
00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:51,320
Speaker 1: you can go on to actually do business. And Uh,

495
00:30:51,720 --> 00:30:54,400
Speaker 1: it took them a year longer than what they were anticipating,

496
00:30:54,400 --> 00:30:57,240
Speaker 1: but they were able to actually ship out the fitness tracker,

497
00:30:58,040 --> 00:31:00,600
Speaker 1: and as it turned out, it was incredibly popular. They

498
00:31:00,640 --> 00:31:05,120
Speaker 1: got thousands and thousands of orders and immediately the value

499
00:31:05,160 --> 00:31:08,440
Speaker 1: of fitbit was on the rise. So this was two

500
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:12,160
Speaker 1: thousand nine and it was met with real enthusiasm. The

501
00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:15,040
Speaker 1: low energy electronics meant that the device could go on

502
00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:18,720
Speaker 1: for several days without ever needing a recharge. The dashboard

503
00:31:18,840 --> 00:31:21,640
Speaker 1: side of things that that view you would get on

504
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:24,680
Speaker 1: your computer or later on your smartphone meant that the

505
00:31:24,760 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 1: user was given so much information that was relevant to

506
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:31,080
Speaker 1: what they were doing. It had a huge appeal. One

507
00:31:31,120 --> 00:31:34,400
Speaker 1: of the easiest ways to sell anything to anyone is

508
00:31:34,400 --> 00:31:41,160
Speaker 1: to involve them in the the product itself, right to say,

509
00:31:41,880 --> 00:31:44,560
Speaker 1: you are what makes this product special. The way you

510
00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:48,560
Speaker 1: use it is reflected in the results you get, and

511
00:31:48,640 --> 00:31:51,360
Speaker 1: so it's all about you. If you want to sell

512
00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:53,240
Speaker 1: me anything and you tell me it's all about me,

513
00:31:54,280 --> 00:31:58,280
Speaker 1: you're well ahead of the game, because I love me. Anyway,

514
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:02,520
Speaker 1: On the back end of things, the fitbit researchers were

515
00:32:02,520 --> 00:32:06,080
Speaker 1: starting to work on various algorithms to try and turn

516
00:32:06,320 --> 00:32:09,800
Speaker 1: just a number that says steps into something more meaningful.

517
00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: So you may have noticed if you've ever used an

518
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:15,480
Speaker 1: activity tracker that you will get a notification of how

519
00:32:15,480 --> 00:32:18,680
Speaker 1: many miles you've walked in a day. Well, you can't

520
00:32:18,720 --> 00:32:22,520
Speaker 1: just base that on the number of steps, because your

521
00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:25,280
Speaker 1: stride is going to be a different length from someone

522
00:32:25,280 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 1: else's stride. If you have someone who's five ft tall

523
00:32:28,440 --> 00:32:31,360
Speaker 1: and someone else who is six ft six and they

524
00:32:31,400 --> 00:32:35,040
Speaker 1: both walk five thousand steps, I guarantee you the six

525
00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:38,400
Speaker 1: ft six inch tall guy walked further. They took the

526
00:32:38,440 --> 00:32:41,240
Speaker 1: same number of steps. But the person who is six

527
00:32:41,240 --> 00:32:43,520
Speaker 1: ft six inch and I said guy, but honestly, the

528
00:32:43,520 --> 00:32:45,640
Speaker 1: first person that popped in my head is a woman

529
00:32:45,840 --> 00:32:50,320
Speaker 1: I know who is very tall. Their stride is longer,

530
00:32:50,360 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 1: so they're going to cover more distance. So part of

531
00:32:53,840 --> 00:32:58,040
Speaker 1: this dashboard experience was users giving information about themselves, like

532
00:32:58,120 --> 00:33:01,800
Speaker 1: their height, so that the estimations could be more accurate.

533
00:33:02,160 --> 00:33:05,040
Speaker 1: Someone who's my height, which is five ft eight is

534
00:33:05,080 --> 00:33:07,320
Speaker 1: not gonna be as walking as far as someone who

535
00:33:07,320 --> 00:33:09,000
Speaker 1: has six ft six even if we took the same

536
00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:11,960
Speaker 1: number of steps. Uh. That was the whole point. So

537
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:13,800
Speaker 1: if you want to estimate how many miles you walk,

538
00:33:13,840 --> 00:33:15,600
Speaker 1: you need to know the height of the person so

539
00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:19,240
Speaker 1: that you can make that estimation. Also, with calories burning,

540
00:33:19,280 --> 00:33:22,520
Speaker 1: you'd have to make estimations based upon age and other factors,

541
00:33:22,560 --> 00:33:24,680
Speaker 1: and in fact, there's so many factors that a lot

542
00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:28,800
Speaker 1: of people have argued that the calories burned metric that

543
00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:33,360
Speaker 1: you find in various activity trackers is largely meaningless because

544
00:33:34,040 --> 00:33:37,360
Speaker 1: it relies on too many unknown variables. It can only

545
00:33:37,960 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 1: really look at things like how much activity did you

546
00:33:40,320 --> 00:33:42,960
Speaker 1: do that day and how frequently did you do it?

547
00:33:43,800 --> 00:33:47,880
Speaker 1: But that doesn't necessarily translate to an easy this is

548
00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:51,240
Speaker 1: how many calories you burned. That being said, it could

549
00:33:51,280 --> 00:33:54,440
Speaker 1: help people when they're trying to make general kind of

550
00:33:54,520 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 1: high level decisions about their diet, their activity levels, that

551
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So it really depends on how you

552
00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:03,520
Speaker 1: look at the products. People who are looking at it

553
00:34:03,640 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 1: as a almost hobbyist way to get into fitness saw

554
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:10,799
Speaker 1: value in it. People who are looking at it as saying,

555
00:34:10,800 --> 00:34:13,600
Speaker 1: you're marketing this more as a medical device. They had

556
00:34:13,640 --> 00:34:17,120
Speaker 1: a lot of harsh criticism to level at fitbit, for

557
00:34:17,160 --> 00:34:20,160
Speaker 1: a good reason, because medical devices have to be far

558
00:34:20,320 --> 00:34:25,400
Speaker 1: more precise, far more accurate than something like an activity tracker.

559
00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:27,960
Speaker 1: But a lot of people were arguing that these two

560
00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:31,960
Speaker 1: camps were not talking the same language, and that Fitbit

561
00:34:32,040 --> 00:34:35,279
Speaker 1: was really aiming itself more toward the hobbyist side than

562
00:34:35,320 --> 00:34:40,040
Speaker 1: the hardcore medical application side. Now it didn't hurt the

563
00:34:40,040 --> 00:34:45,240
Speaker 1: fitbits popularity that they happen to have some savvy into

564
00:34:45,520 --> 00:34:49,680
Speaker 1: social media as well. Right, That incorporation of the social

565
00:34:49,719 --> 00:34:53,839
Speaker 1: aspect in fitbits business plan really helped a great deal.

566
00:34:54,480 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 1: They incorporated this ability to connect with friends, and you

567
00:34:57,560 --> 00:35:00,760
Speaker 1: could actually compare how many steps have I taken versus

568
00:35:00,880 --> 00:35:03,960
Speaker 1: how many steps has Matt Frederick taken versus how many

569
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:07,399
Speaker 1: steps has been Bowland taken? That kind of thing, and

570
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:11,200
Speaker 1: by comparing them, you could end up either thinking, oh,

571
00:35:11,239 --> 00:35:13,640
Speaker 1: I need to get another two thousand steps in because

572
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:16,440
Speaker 1: I gotta beat this guy, or maybe you're thinking I'm

573
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:19,440
Speaker 1: way more active than those slug of beds. And it

574
00:35:19,520 --> 00:35:22,960
Speaker 1: created also a competitive element to fit Bit that they

575
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:26,960
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily anticipating when they first started to implement the

576
00:35:27,080 --> 00:35:31,920
Speaker 1: social uh features in the fitbit product. But they realized

577
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:36,120
Speaker 1: that that competitive element drove people to use fitbit more

578
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:39,520
Speaker 1: and to become kind of Fitbit evangelists because they were

579
00:35:39,560 --> 00:35:42,720
Speaker 1: getting out, they were doing things they wanted to earn steps.

580
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:45,359
Speaker 1: Anyone who's had an activity tracker, I guarantee you. At

581
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:48,439
Speaker 1: some point in their lives, they have said, I don't

582
00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:50,520
Speaker 1: even know why I walked. I wasn't wearing my tracker.

583
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:54,400
Speaker 1: They didn't count, Like somehow those steps don't count unless

584
00:35:54,400 --> 00:35:57,880
Speaker 1: they're being quantified by the activity tracker. Well, that's great

585
00:35:57,880 --> 00:36:00,120
Speaker 1: news for a company like fitbit, because it means that

586
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:03,319
Speaker 1: people need the product, or they at least think they

587
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:07,560
Speaker 1: need the product that is selling. And uh, that social

588
00:36:07,560 --> 00:36:10,080
Speaker 1: element would actually come to be a problem a little

589
00:36:10,120 --> 00:36:14,279
Speaker 1: bit later. I'll mention that when we get there, it's saucy.

590
00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:17,440
Speaker 1: By the way, in case you're wondering, I am on

591
00:36:17,560 --> 00:36:21,360
Speaker 1: the top of my fitbit friends list um by about

592
00:36:21,480 --> 00:36:24,839
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand steps per week. But to be fair, I

593
00:36:24,880 --> 00:36:27,560
Speaker 1: also walked to and from work, and I lived several

594
00:36:27,600 --> 00:36:31,000
Speaker 1: miles away from the office, so it's a necessity. I

595
00:36:31,040 --> 00:36:34,680
Speaker 1: don't drive, so that helps me with my steps. It's

596
00:36:34,680 --> 00:36:38,880
Speaker 1: not like I am super physically active compared to the

597
00:36:38,920 --> 00:36:41,840
Speaker 1: people on my list. It's a matter of necessity for me.

598
00:36:43,800 --> 00:36:45,719
Speaker 1: All right. You know what, let's take a moment to

599
00:36:45,760 --> 00:36:50,160
Speaker 1: talk about the awkwardness of social connectivity. You see, one

600
00:36:50,160 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 1: of the things that bit also allowed you to do

601
00:36:52,200 --> 00:36:55,959
Speaker 1: is create an exercise diary because the fitbit was really

602
00:36:55,960 --> 00:36:58,920
Speaker 1: good at detecting when you were walking or when you

603
00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:02,080
Speaker 1: were jogging, But a lot of the fitbits weren't waterproof,

604
00:37:02,400 --> 00:37:06,040
Speaker 1: so you couldn't track your your activity when you were swimming.

605
00:37:06,680 --> 00:37:09,680
Speaker 1: Many of them couldn't really tell what was going on

606
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:12,480
Speaker 1: if you were doing exercises in a gem like let's

607
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:14,840
Speaker 1: say you're getting on the elliptical, it might not be

608
00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:19,400
Speaker 1: able to track that movement. So the exercise diary feature

609
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:23,600
Speaker 1: on your dashboard allowed you to enter other activities, get

610
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:26,960
Speaker 1: an estimation of how many calories you burned doing those activities,

611
00:37:27,160 --> 00:37:29,279
Speaker 1: and then you would factor all of that in for

612
00:37:29,400 --> 00:37:32,040
Speaker 1: your end of the day report, saying here's how many

613
00:37:32,040 --> 00:37:37,640
Speaker 1: calories you burned today. Fitbits said that as a default

614
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:41,400
Speaker 1: shared setting, meaning that if you were creating an exercise

615
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:44,960
Speaker 1: diary and you had not changed the default, you were

616
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:47,840
Speaker 1: sharing all of that information to the general public. You

617
00:37:47,960 --> 00:37:50,040
Speaker 1: might say like, I got on the elliptical for twenty

618
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:53,080
Speaker 1: five minutes and I burned this many calories, and anyone

619
00:37:53,080 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 1: who looks at your profile could see that. But people

620
00:37:56,560 --> 00:37:59,839
Speaker 1: were putting in all sorts of different entries in their

621
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:04,960
Speaker 1: exercise diaries, including times when they were getting a little romantic,

622
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:10,879
Speaker 1: getting a little uh intimate, getting busy. In other words, Yeah,

623
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:16,239
Speaker 1: people were putting down sex as an activity in these

624
00:38:16,280 --> 00:38:20,200
Speaker 1: exercise diaries and getting estimations for how many calories they

625
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:24,719
Speaker 1: burned during those activities, not necessarily realizing that by default

626
00:38:25,040 --> 00:38:28,840
Speaker 1: this was being shared to everyone out there. So in

627
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:33,280
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven this information kind of got spread around.

628
00:38:33,360 --> 00:38:36,040
Speaker 1: A lot of blogs had fun with it. They talked

629
00:38:36,080 --> 00:38:40,759
Speaker 1: about how fitbit was inadvertently sharing people's sex lives to

630
00:38:41,040 --> 00:38:44,200
Speaker 1: anyone who was interested, and it was at that point

631
00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:47,600
Speaker 1: that Fitbit decided to change that particular policy and set

632
00:38:47,640 --> 00:38:51,359
Speaker 1: the default to private instead of public, And at that

633
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:55,560
Speaker 1: point we no longer saw tons of people sharing their

634
00:38:55,600 --> 00:38:59,480
Speaker 1: sex lives unknowingly. If they did, they were doing it

635
00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:01,720
Speaker 1: because they in in and change the setting to public

636
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:04,440
Speaker 1: from private. Oh if it ben't even win an extra stop.

637
00:39:04,480 --> 00:39:09,880
Speaker 1: They actually contacted search engines and they asked for the

638
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:13,799
Speaker 1: past diary entries to be removed from search engine indexes,

639
00:39:14,040 --> 00:39:17,160
Speaker 1: so that way you couldn't just search someone's fitbit profile

640
00:39:17,520 --> 00:39:20,680
Speaker 1: and use the search results to go back to an

641
00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:23,719
Speaker 1: archive diary entry that you're not supposed to see. So

642
00:39:23,760 --> 00:39:26,520
Speaker 1: they did take some steps to correct this problem. It

643
00:39:26,560 --> 00:39:28,600
Speaker 1: was a problem that they had created by making that

644
00:39:28,719 --> 00:39:31,520
Speaker 1: default public, but it was also a problem that users

645
00:39:31,560 --> 00:39:36,839
Speaker 1: created by putting in other activities on that exercise stuff. Uh.

646
00:39:37,520 --> 00:39:41,839
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was a little awkward. So fitbit um

647
00:39:42,080 --> 00:39:45,320
Speaker 1: learned the hard way that getting into that social game

648
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:48,719
Speaker 1: is a little tricky, kin of the same thing as

649
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:53,239
Speaker 1: getting into manufacturing is a little tricky. After all that,

650
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:55,680
Speaker 1: the team was going back to work on developing new

651
00:39:55,760 --> 00:39:58,040
Speaker 1: types of Fitbit trackers. Now I'm not going to go

652
00:39:58,080 --> 00:40:01,080
Speaker 1: into every single product that they've made, because that would

653
00:40:01,120 --> 00:40:03,640
Speaker 1: be silly. Uh. There are a lot of them that

654
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:07,680
Speaker 1: haven't been sold for years. They got replaced by later models. Uh,

655
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:14,400
Speaker 1: they're They're all various variations, I should say on that

656
00:40:14,480 --> 00:40:19,200
Speaker 1: initial fitness tracker. Some have more components to them, but

657
00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:22,680
Speaker 1: ultimately they all work in a very similar way. So

658
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:24,480
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense for me to go into all

659
00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:26,880
Speaker 1: the different types. Again, this isn't a commercial for Fitbit.

660
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:30,480
Speaker 1: This is just an episode talking about the company and

661
00:40:30,520 --> 00:40:34,760
Speaker 1: their technology and how it works. So I will talk

662
00:40:35,320 --> 00:40:39,719
Speaker 1: a little bit about some of the other components that

663
00:40:39,800 --> 00:40:44,000
Speaker 1: are in Fitbit devices. So the Fitbit tracker that was

664
00:40:44,040 --> 00:40:46,239
Speaker 1: their first device. One of the next ones they had

665
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:49,240
Speaker 1: was the Fitbit Ultra, which was kind of an updated

666
00:40:49,360 --> 00:40:50,920
Speaker 1: version of the tracker, and one of the things that

667
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:57,600
Speaker 1: added was an altimeter. Uh. And an altimeter is something

668
00:40:57,640 --> 00:41:02,960
Speaker 1: that measures altitude or distance vertically, right, the difference in

669
00:41:03,120 --> 00:41:08,240
Speaker 1: vertical distance between the altimeter and some fixed object, which

670
00:41:08,880 --> 00:41:12,279
Speaker 1: typically is the ground right sea level, or at least

671
00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:17,480
Speaker 1: ground level. And the way it works is it doesn't

672
00:41:17,600 --> 00:41:23,120
Speaker 1: measure directly the distance between it's vertical position in the ground.

673
00:41:23,920 --> 00:41:27,960
Speaker 1: It measures altitude by looking at something related but different

674
00:41:28,360 --> 00:41:32,719
Speaker 1: atmospheric pressure. Now we're gonna go into some basic science time,

675
00:41:32,800 --> 00:41:35,399
Speaker 1: and I know most of you are familiar with this,

676
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:38,000
Speaker 1: but you know, I always like to have a little refresher.

677
00:41:38,640 --> 00:41:42,640
Speaker 1: The atmosphere that we breathe, it has weight to it, right,

678
00:41:42,960 --> 00:41:46,839
Speaker 1: It's a fluid, and typically we're at the bottom of

679
00:41:46,880 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 1: it because we're on ground level or somewhere close to it.

680
00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:54,279
Speaker 1: Not all the time, obviously, but frequently. So if you

681
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:57,080
Speaker 1: ever felt that you're constantly under pressure, you kind of are,

682
00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:00,759
Speaker 1: at least from the atmosphere. But it's good because if

683
00:42:00,760 --> 00:42:02,360
Speaker 1: you weren't, we wouldn't be able to breathe and you

684
00:42:02,360 --> 00:42:06,040
Speaker 1: would die. So sometimes pressure as good as web saying,

685
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:13,120
Speaker 1: as you climb in elevation, as you move up a ladder,

686
00:42:13,480 --> 00:42:17,160
Speaker 1: go up some stairs, climb a mountain, get in an airplane,

687
00:42:18,560 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 1: you end up having less of this fluid above you

688
00:42:22,040 --> 00:42:24,120
Speaker 1: than you did before. Right, some of that fluids now

689
00:42:24,160 --> 00:42:27,640
Speaker 1: below you. The weight has decreased as you go up

690
00:42:28,400 --> 00:42:32,400
Speaker 1: because you have less atmosphere overhead. It makes sense, right,

691
00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:36,799
Speaker 1: there's less pressing down on you, So there's less weight now.

692
00:42:36,840 --> 00:42:39,520
Speaker 1: If you go far enough, like you climb a tall mountain,

693
00:42:40,280 --> 00:42:42,640
Speaker 1: the pressure changes can be enough to actually have a

694
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:45,160
Speaker 1: physical effect on you. Most of the time, it's so

695
00:42:45,200 --> 00:42:48,479
Speaker 1: subtle that we cannot detect it by ourselves. We would

696
00:42:48,520 --> 00:42:51,920
Speaker 1: have to have some sort of sensitive instrument in order

697
00:42:51,960 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 1: to detect that change. It's also why modern jets are pressurized,

698
00:42:57,920 --> 00:43:01,920
Speaker 1: because if they were unpressurized traveling at thirty ft, the

699
00:43:01,960 --> 00:43:05,959
Speaker 1: atmosphere would be so thin that it would be not

700
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:10,200
Speaker 1: not not fun times, very not fun times. So you

701
00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:14,120
Speaker 1: pressurize the interior of your plane for a couple of reasons.

702
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:16,480
Speaker 1: One to make breathing easier to you don't want your

703
00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:21,279
Speaker 1: ear drums to blow out suddenly. Um, So it's really

704
00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:25,440
Speaker 1: important same thing is true for people who are climbing mountains.

705
00:43:25,520 --> 00:43:29,120
Speaker 1: Often you are told that you have to acclimate to

706
00:43:29,760 --> 00:43:33,920
Speaker 1: air pressure at certain stages of tall mountains, otherwise you

707
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:38,759
Speaker 1: run at the risk of getting sick from altitude sickness. Well,

708
00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:44,000
Speaker 1: altimeters detect air pressure and changes in air pressure, and

709
00:43:44,200 --> 00:43:47,440
Speaker 1: they track things like how many stairs you've climbed by

710
00:43:47,480 --> 00:43:51,000
Speaker 1: detecting those changes in air pressure. The altimeter sensor on

711
00:43:51,040 --> 00:43:53,319
Speaker 1: a fitbit is sensitive enough to detect when you have

712
00:43:53,440 --> 00:43:57,520
Speaker 1: changed ten feet in elevation, whether you're going ten feet

713
00:43:57,600 --> 00:44:01,160
Speaker 1: up or ten feet down, but it only counts stairs

714
00:44:01,200 --> 00:44:04,000
Speaker 1: climbed if you're going up. So, in other words, if

715
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:07,880
Speaker 1: the atmospheric pressure is decreasing to the point that the

716
00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:11,960
Speaker 1: fitbit says, oh, this guy's gone ten feet up, they've

717
00:44:12,000 --> 00:44:16,200
Speaker 1: climbed some stairs. But if it increases, indicating that you're

718
00:44:16,239 --> 00:44:18,920
Speaker 1: moving downward, it doesn't count it as stairs climbed. And

719
00:44:18,960 --> 00:44:21,719
Speaker 1: that's largely because if you're going downstairs, you don't have

720
00:44:21,760 --> 00:44:23,640
Speaker 1: to exert as much energy as you would if you're

721
00:44:23,640 --> 00:44:26,600
Speaker 1: climbing upstairs. So really you should only be interested in

722
00:44:26,640 --> 00:44:28,680
Speaker 1: how many stairs did you climb, not how many stairs

723
00:44:28,680 --> 00:44:31,319
Speaker 1: did you descend. That's why it doesn't count it if

724
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:36,680
Speaker 1: you're going down. Uh. I've noticed that that my fitbit

725
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:40,720
Speaker 1: will sometimes detect a hill as a set of stairs.

726
00:44:40,760 --> 00:44:43,440
Speaker 1: So if it bit tries to determine whether you're climbing

727
00:44:43,440 --> 00:44:46,640
Speaker 1: stairs versus walking up an inclined path by combining the

728
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:49,840
Speaker 1: data from the altimeter, So how much change in elevation

729
00:44:49,880 --> 00:44:53,680
Speaker 1: have you experienced with the actual motion data from the

730
00:44:53,760 --> 00:44:58,719
Speaker 1: three axis accelerometers which tell how frequently you're moving your arms,

731
00:44:58,800 --> 00:45:03,080
Speaker 1: and can kind of with the combined data suss out

732
00:45:03,120 --> 00:45:06,000
Speaker 1: whether or not you're walking upstairs or you're going up

733
00:45:06,239 --> 00:45:09,200
Speaker 1: a pathway. But it turns out it's not an exact science.

734
00:45:09,520 --> 00:45:11,920
Speaker 1: So for example, yesterday it told me that I climbed

735
00:45:12,000 --> 00:45:15,600
Speaker 1: seventy five flights of stairs. I definitely did not climb

736
00:45:15,600 --> 00:45:18,399
Speaker 1: seventy five flights of stairs yesterday, but I did walk

737
00:45:18,520 --> 00:45:22,840
Speaker 1: up a lot of hills. So that that's the uh,

738
00:45:22,880 --> 00:45:26,439
Speaker 1: you know, kind of subtlety that it can't quite tell

739
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:31,320
Speaker 1: the difference between If you were to map fitbit data

740
00:45:31,400 --> 00:45:34,719
Speaker 1: against a map, like literally pair a map with the

741
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:38,160
Speaker 1: fitbit data in a way for it to take into

742
00:45:38,200 --> 00:45:41,359
Speaker 1: account the geography, maybe then it would say, all right,

743
00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:44,160
Speaker 1: well you didn't walk up seventy f five flights of stairs,

744
00:45:44,160 --> 00:45:46,640
Speaker 1: but you did climb this amount of elevation in this

745
00:45:46,680 --> 00:45:52,480
Speaker 1: amount of time. Later, still, fitbit introduced some heart rate

746
00:45:52,600 --> 00:45:55,080
Speaker 1: monitors in some of its products, and you might want

747
00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:57,480
Speaker 1: to know how does that work? For example, the one

748
00:45:57,480 --> 00:46:00,359
Speaker 1: I have as a charge too, it's got heart ray

749
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:02,759
Speaker 1: monitor on it. So how does this thing that I

750
00:46:02,800 --> 00:46:07,839
Speaker 1: wear on my wrist tell how frequently my heartbeats? All right?

751
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:11,680
Speaker 1: So it does this through Oh, good grief, this is

752
00:46:11,719 --> 00:46:15,480
Speaker 1: gonna be a slaughter, all right. It does this through

753
00:46:15,520 --> 00:46:23,320
Speaker 1: a process called photo plethism graphy, also known as PPG,

754
00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:26,200
Speaker 1: which is how I'm going to refer to it for

755
00:46:26,239 --> 00:46:28,200
Speaker 1: the rest of this discussion, because I think I might

756
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:31,440
Speaker 1: be able to say photo flip, photo flip this ma

757
00:46:31,680 --> 00:46:35,239
Speaker 1: graphy correctly twice in my entire life, and uh, I

758
00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:39,200
Speaker 1: think I just did so. Game over man. Alright. So,

759
00:46:39,320 --> 00:46:42,440
Speaker 1: human blood, as I'm sure most of you are aware,

760
00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:47,840
Speaker 1: is red, right well, red stuff reflects red light and

761
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:52,200
Speaker 1: it absorbs green light really well. So anything that's red

762
00:46:52,200 --> 00:46:55,279
Speaker 1: gets reflected off of red stuff, anything that's green gets

763
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:59,040
Speaker 1: absorbed by red stuff. So devices like the fitbit charged

764
00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:02,840
Speaker 1: to pair a couple of light ometers that are pulsing

765
00:47:02,880 --> 00:47:08,080
Speaker 1: green light with a sensor that detects reflected green light,

766
00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:11,279
Speaker 1: and that's how it's able to tell how much light

767
00:47:11,480 --> 00:47:16,359
Speaker 1: is being reflected or absorbed by your blood. So it's

768
00:47:16,360 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 1: positioned over little blood veins in your arm, and whenever

769
00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:23,640
Speaker 1: it detects that a lot of light is being absorbed,

770
00:47:24,040 --> 00:47:28,080
Speaker 1: it's saying, oh, blood is flowing through the vein right now.

771
00:47:28,640 --> 00:47:31,279
Speaker 1: Whenever it detects a lot of light is being reflected,

772
00:47:31,320 --> 00:47:35,279
Speaker 1: it says, oh, blood is not flowing through that vein

773
00:47:35,400 --> 00:47:39,839
Speaker 1: right now. And by counting the number of times that

774
00:47:39,960 --> 00:47:44,040
Speaker 1: this absorption and reflection pattern goes within a minute, it

775
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:46,879
Speaker 1: gives you your heart rate. That's how it works. It's

776
00:47:46,920 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 1: kind of cool. It's not full proof to detect heartbeats

777
00:47:51,000 --> 00:47:53,920
Speaker 1: this way. Advice has to be fairly secure against the skin.

778
00:47:54,920 --> 00:47:56,920
Speaker 1: So when you exercise, you tend to move around a lot.

779
00:47:56,960 --> 00:48:00,480
Speaker 1: At least that's what I'm lead to understand. And uh,

780
00:48:00,560 --> 00:48:03,040
Speaker 1: I'm someone who walks a lot, but i haven't really

781
00:48:03,719 --> 00:48:07,360
Speaker 1: jumped into that full exercise schedule, so I'm only speaking

782
00:48:07,360 --> 00:48:09,600
Speaker 1: from second hand experience at this point. But if you're

783
00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:12,440
Speaker 1: doing a lot of vigorous weightlifting or running or something.

784
00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:15,320
Speaker 1: A wrist mounted activity tracker is probably going to slide

785
00:48:15,320 --> 00:48:18,160
Speaker 1: around a lot, and that means it's more difficult to

786
00:48:18,200 --> 00:48:22,000
Speaker 1: get an accurate reading on the heart rate UM and

787
00:48:22,040 --> 00:48:24,919
Speaker 1: that actually has caused some real issues. It's actually could

788
00:48:24,920 --> 00:48:28,919
Speaker 1: be potentially dangerous. Uh. Some people really push themselves very

789
00:48:28,960 --> 00:48:31,319
Speaker 1: hard when they're working out. They're trying to get their

790
00:48:31,360 --> 00:48:34,920
Speaker 1: heart at a peak level for a certain amount of time. UM.

791
00:48:35,120 --> 00:48:37,799
Speaker 1: Particularly people who are really trying to push their performance,

792
00:48:38,200 --> 00:48:39,719
Speaker 1: and they need to know if their heart rate is

793
00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:42,839
Speaker 1: exceeding safe parameters. If it's at peak for too long,

794
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:47,520
Speaker 1: they could actually suffer some serious health problems. So Fitbit

795
00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:50,239
Speaker 1: and other activity company tracker companies have come under fire

796
00:48:50,360 --> 00:48:54,279
Speaker 1: from some healthcare professionals who have said, your marketing a

797
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:57,920
Speaker 1: product with certain claims that could lead someone to believe

798
00:48:58,000 --> 00:49:03,040
Speaker 1: they have a level of vision akin to a medical device,

799
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:07,280
Speaker 1: but you haven't submitted your products to the kind of testing,

800
00:49:07,320 --> 00:49:10,399
Speaker 1: the rigorous testing that medical devices have to go through

801
00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:14,320
Speaker 1: in order to be certified as being that kind of accurate.

802
00:49:14,880 --> 00:49:18,480
Speaker 1: And uh. Again it becomes this this war of words

803
00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:21,960
Speaker 1: with activity tracker and company saying this is something to

804
00:49:22,040 --> 00:49:26,960
Speaker 1: help people with fitness issues, but it's not marketed as

805
00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:29,719
Speaker 1: a medical device, and the medical industry saying yeah, but

806
00:49:29,760 --> 00:49:31,839
Speaker 1: people are kind of treating it that way. So there's

807
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:34,480
Speaker 1: a level of responsibility you need to take, and it's

808
00:49:34,520 --> 00:49:38,239
Speaker 1: kind of a back and forth. Now. By measuring a

809
00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:40,680
Speaker 1: user's heart rate, fitbit can also make a little bit

810
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:43,239
Speaker 1: more of an educated guess as to how many calories

811
00:49:43,320 --> 00:49:46,200
Speaker 1: that person is burning in a day. And you probably

812
00:49:46,200 --> 00:49:49,000
Speaker 1: heard about the various ranges of heart rates that indicate

813
00:49:49,000 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 1: whether you're in a fat burning mode which is slightly elevated,

814
00:49:53,000 --> 00:49:55,759
Speaker 1: or if you're in a cardio vascular exercise mode, which

815
00:49:55,800 --> 00:49:58,800
Speaker 1: is a range beyond that, or if you're in peak mode,

816
00:49:58,840 --> 00:50:01,719
Speaker 1: which is that other level I was talking about, or

817
00:50:01,760 --> 00:50:04,480
Speaker 1: if you're just resting. And this is actually a pretty

818
00:50:04,480 --> 00:50:07,640
Speaker 1: tricky area itself, even outside of the technology sphere, there

819
00:50:07,640 --> 00:50:09,839
Speaker 1: are a lot of people who argue exactly where that

820
00:50:09,960 --> 00:50:13,200
Speaker 1: range should be and how accurate it is, or whether

821
00:50:13,239 --> 00:50:15,279
Speaker 1: it's accurate at all, or what does it mean or

822
00:50:15,480 --> 00:50:18,080
Speaker 1: is it meaningful? Uh, And I'm not going to get

823
00:50:18,080 --> 00:50:19,680
Speaker 1: into that because it doesn't really have anything to do

824
00:50:19,760 --> 00:50:21,759
Speaker 1: with the technology, but it does show that this is

825
00:50:21,800 --> 00:50:25,319
Speaker 1: another area where there's a lot of disagreement about what

826
00:50:25,600 --> 00:50:29,800
Speaker 1: is the actual right way to go forward. But Fitbit

827
00:50:29,840 --> 00:50:33,320
Speaker 1: will combine information from all these different accelerometers and altimeter

828
00:50:33,440 --> 00:50:35,719
Speaker 1: and heart rate sensors in order to give you an

829
00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:38,120
Speaker 1: idea of how many calories you have burned throughout the day,

830
00:50:38,600 --> 00:50:45,399
Speaker 1: even though that might not be absolutely accurate. Now we're

831
00:50:45,400 --> 00:50:48,240
Speaker 1: gonna talk a little bit more about the company side

832
00:50:48,239 --> 00:50:51,000
Speaker 1: of Fitbit, now that we've covered the technology side quite

833
00:50:51,000 --> 00:50:53,759
Speaker 1: a bit in just a second. But first let's take

834
00:50:53,760 --> 00:51:04,160
Speaker 1: another quick break to thank our sponsor. All Right, let's

835
00:51:04,200 --> 00:51:06,879
Speaker 1: go back to talk about the company a little bit

836
00:51:07,160 --> 00:51:12,040
Speaker 1: and how Fitbit has performed through all of this. So

837
00:51:12,239 --> 00:51:15,960
Speaker 1: shortly after Fitbit took off, activity trackers became a huge

838
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:20,040
Speaker 1: deal in the electronics industry, and Fitbit enjoyed a great

839
00:51:20,040 --> 00:51:23,200
Speaker 1: amount of success. Very early on, they focused on creating

840
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:26,520
Speaker 1: those products that we're feeling, filling a niche between like

841
00:51:27,600 --> 00:51:31,120
Speaker 1: and two hundred dollars. Really like the hundred and thirty

842
00:51:31,640 --> 00:51:35,360
Speaker 1: and fifty dollar range was their their playground, and that

843
00:51:35,440 --> 00:51:39,800
Speaker 1: also meant that they were avoiding the problems of creating

844
00:51:40,280 --> 00:51:45,839
Speaker 1: higher priced luxury items that that some electronics fans were

845
00:51:45,840 --> 00:51:49,359
Speaker 1: balking at. They also decided early that they were not

846
00:51:49,400 --> 00:51:52,520
Speaker 1: going to get into smart watches right away, which ended

847
00:51:52,600 --> 00:51:54,719
Speaker 1: up being a smart decision because a lot of people

848
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:58,160
Speaker 1: were out there trying to create smart watches and no

849
00:51:58,239 --> 00:52:00,319
Speaker 1: one was really sure what a smart watch would be

850
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:02,840
Speaker 1: or what should do apart from tell the time, and

851
00:52:02,840 --> 00:52:04,480
Speaker 1: I'm sure some of them were even wondering if it

852
00:52:04,520 --> 00:52:08,960
Speaker 1: should do that. Now, Fitbit did include stuff like a

853
00:52:09,120 --> 00:52:13,360
Speaker 1: watch and some of its models, so there were models

854
00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 1: after the Fitbit tracker that had a clock element to them,

855
00:52:18,719 --> 00:52:21,719
Speaker 1: but you would say that it was a clock on

856
00:52:21,800 --> 00:52:24,920
Speaker 1: an activity tracker, not that it was a watch that

857
00:52:25,080 --> 00:52:32,440
Speaker 1: also tracked activity. So very different approach, not something that

858
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:36,600
Speaker 1: the smart watch companies were really going after. Then they

859
00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:39,440
Speaker 1: started adding other features, like you could get notifications on

860
00:52:39,640 --> 00:52:42,600
Speaker 1: certain Fitbit devices, so when you paired it with a phone,

861
00:52:42,840 --> 00:52:44,960
Speaker 1: if a notification came through on your phone, you might

862
00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:47,600
Speaker 1: get an alert on your Fitbit. So you might miss

863
00:52:47,640 --> 00:52:49,440
Speaker 1: it if your phones in your pocket, but then your

864
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:52,120
Speaker 1: wrist vibrates and you take a look and you see, oh,

865
00:52:52,320 --> 00:52:54,840
Speaker 1: someone's texting me, or I just got an email or

866
00:52:54,880 --> 00:52:57,600
Speaker 1: whatever it might be, or I've got a calendar event

867
00:52:57,680 --> 00:53:03,160
Speaker 1: coming up that I should pay attention to. Then Fitbit

868
00:53:03,320 --> 00:53:06,279
Speaker 1: eventually did release a smart watch. They released it in

869
00:53:07,960 --> 00:53:11,680
Speaker 1: and it's called the Fitbit Blaze, and that was really

870
00:53:11,680 --> 00:53:14,200
Speaker 1: the first attempt to Fitbit to take aim at the

871
00:53:14,239 --> 00:53:17,240
Speaker 1: smart watch industry. But at that point they were already saying,

872
00:53:17,960 --> 00:53:20,839
Speaker 1: we wanna wait to see how other companies do it

873
00:53:21,719 --> 00:53:24,640
Speaker 1: and see what's working and what's not working before we

874
00:53:24,719 --> 00:53:28,360
Speaker 1: attempt to do it ourselves, because right now everyone's arguing

875
00:53:28,400 --> 00:53:31,120
Speaker 1: over what a smart watch should even be, So why

876
00:53:31,160 --> 00:53:33,839
Speaker 1: would we make something if we're not even sure that

877
00:53:33,840 --> 00:53:37,359
Speaker 1: that particular form factor is going to ever work out.

878
00:53:38,480 --> 00:53:41,319
Speaker 1: So they did launch the Blaze last year. I know

879
00:53:41,560 --> 00:53:43,719
Speaker 1: that they were very proud of it, but kind of

880
00:53:43,719 --> 00:53:47,239
Speaker 1: surprised that the market didn't immediately respond in a very

881
00:53:47,239 --> 00:53:51,360
Speaker 1: positive way. The reviews were pretty good, but the market

882
00:53:51,400 --> 00:53:54,480
Speaker 1: itself didn't respond in a very enthusiastic way, and that

883
00:53:54,840 --> 00:53:58,600
Speaker 1: frustrated people over at Fitbit. And I think largely that's

884
00:53:58,600 --> 00:54:01,880
Speaker 1: again because even as could sumers, we aren't really sure

885
00:54:01,920 --> 00:54:04,879
Speaker 1: what a smart watch should be, Like, what is the

886
00:54:04,920 --> 00:54:06,960
Speaker 1: thing about a smart watch that's going to make it

887
00:54:07,000 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 1: so useful that you absolutely have to have it unless

888
00:54:11,080 --> 00:54:14,080
Speaker 1: you're an iPhone Apple fan? In which case you probably

889
00:54:14,080 --> 00:54:18,320
Speaker 1: buy an Apple smart watch because it had Apple on it.

890
00:54:18,680 --> 00:54:27,080
Speaker 1: Burn back. In two thousand, Fitbit launched its initial public offering.

891
00:54:27,120 --> 00:54:29,520
Speaker 1: It's I p O. In other words, this is the

892
00:54:29,560 --> 00:54:34,719
Speaker 1: process where a privately held company switches over to a

893
00:54:34,760 --> 00:54:39,160
Speaker 1: publicly traded company. It's where you issue stock and people

894
00:54:39,200 --> 00:54:43,080
Speaker 1: can go and buy stock in your company. Before the

895
00:54:43,120 --> 00:54:45,880
Speaker 1: stocks went on the market, before they were going to

896
00:54:45,880 --> 00:54:50,640
Speaker 1: be traded, they were initially valued at twenty dollars a share.

897
00:54:52,320 --> 00:54:54,880
Speaker 1: That was before trading began, but once trading began, the

898
00:54:54,960 --> 00:54:58,240
Speaker 1: value actually shot up very quickly. The actual opening price

899
00:54:58,320 --> 00:55:02,400
Speaker 1: was thirty dollars forty sense. The company ended up getting

900
00:55:02,400 --> 00:55:06,960
Speaker 1: evaluation of four point one billion dollars. You essentially multiply

901
00:55:07,040 --> 00:55:10,000
Speaker 1: the number of shares by the share price. That gives

902
00:55:10,040 --> 00:55:12,680
Speaker 1: you a rough idea of the valuation four point one

903
00:55:13,120 --> 00:55:18,479
Speaker 1: billion dollars. James Park received the honor of being named

904
00:55:18,520 --> 00:55:22,840
Speaker 1: one of Fortune magazines forty under forty in two thousand fifteen.

905
00:55:23,400 --> 00:55:27,360
Speaker 1: He was thirty nine at the time, a year younger

906
00:55:27,360 --> 00:55:31,200
Speaker 1: than me. I can't lie to you, this one hurts

907
00:55:31,200 --> 00:55:34,680
Speaker 1: a bit. I'm sure that in two thousand fourteen I

908
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:38,919
Speaker 1: was like, seriously considered for inclusion in the forty under forty,

909
00:55:38,960 --> 00:55:42,000
Speaker 1: but I probably missed it by that much. But seriously, though,

910
00:55:42,320 --> 00:55:45,480
Speaker 1: it was another indicator that park In Freedman had been

911
00:55:46,080 --> 00:55:50,640
Speaker 1: on the very tip of the spear that was activity trackers,

912
00:55:50,680 --> 00:55:54,680
Speaker 1: that they had led that charge well. And this was

913
00:55:54,840 --> 00:55:57,800
Speaker 1: also around the time that activity trackers began to dominate

914
00:55:58,040 --> 00:56:02,319
Speaker 1: entire sections of the room floor at ce s every

915
00:56:02,360 --> 00:56:06,640
Speaker 1: year there's an entire area that's just activity trackers, and

916
00:56:06,920 --> 00:56:11,319
Speaker 1: it's enormous. Traditional companies and startups alike, we're getting into

917
00:56:11,320 --> 00:56:14,560
Speaker 1: the game, and the space became really highly competitive. Fit

918
00:56:14,640 --> 00:56:17,120
Speaker 1: that was benefiting from the fact that they had been

919
00:56:17,120 --> 00:56:20,640
Speaker 1: in the market since it first started. But it's also

920
00:56:20,640 --> 00:56:22,719
Speaker 1: important to mention Fitbit. It's not like they were the

921
00:56:22,760 --> 00:56:25,800
Speaker 1: first activity tracker of all time, but they were early

922
00:56:25,960 --> 00:56:29,600
Speaker 1: enough and popular enough to become kind of the defining

923
00:56:29,719 --> 00:56:33,879
Speaker 1: name in the space for a lot of people. Now

924
00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:37,520
Speaker 1: there's another challenge that all activity companies have to face.

925
00:56:38,320 --> 00:56:40,479
Speaker 1: Not only is there a lot of competition out there,

926
00:56:41,080 --> 00:56:43,520
Speaker 1: but there's also the problem of convincing customers to buy

927
00:56:43,520 --> 00:56:47,280
Speaker 1: an activity tracker if they already own an activity tracker.

928
00:56:48,080 --> 00:56:52,400
Speaker 1: So it's not just competition, but also market saturation. Activity

929
00:56:52,440 --> 00:56:55,000
Speaker 1: trackers are designed to last a pretty good long while.

930
00:56:55,120 --> 00:56:57,719
Speaker 1: If they died out super fast, people would be very

931
00:56:57,760 --> 00:57:01,319
Speaker 1: irritated with them. So think about, you know, that whole

932
00:57:01,360 --> 00:57:05,759
Speaker 1: planned obsolescence idea, That strategy of let's make something that

933
00:57:05,840 --> 00:57:08,120
Speaker 1: within a couple of years you absolutely have to replace

934
00:57:08,200 --> 00:57:11,279
Speaker 1: because it will be obsolete, doesn't really work so well

935
00:57:11,280 --> 00:57:13,759
Speaker 1: with activity trackers. A lot of people feel that as

936
00:57:13,800 --> 00:57:16,720
Speaker 1: long as it's still working, that's good enough for them.

937
00:57:16,880 --> 00:57:19,920
Speaker 1: So that means it gets harder and harder to sell

938
00:57:19,960 --> 00:57:23,000
Speaker 1: more of your products. There are more people selling, so

939
00:57:23,080 --> 00:57:25,240
Speaker 1: you've got a lot of competition, and a lot of

940
00:57:25,280 --> 00:57:28,919
Speaker 1: your your target customers already owned one, so it's hard

941
00:57:28,960 --> 00:57:31,760
Speaker 1: to commence them to go and buy a new one.

942
00:57:33,120 --> 00:57:37,000
Speaker 1: That means that and make it even more complicated. Not

943
00:57:37,080 --> 00:57:40,520
Speaker 1: just activity trackers, smart watches too. Right, if you've gone

944
00:57:40,600 --> 00:57:43,000
Speaker 1: in and you've bought a smart watch that happens to

945
00:57:43,040 --> 00:57:46,040
Speaker 1: have some activity tracking capabilities as well as being a

946
00:57:46,040 --> 00:57:49,440
Speaker 1: smart watch, that's even less reason for you to go

947
00:57:49,480 --> 00:57:52,360
Speaker 1: out and buy another activity tracker. So not only was

948
00:57:52,400 --> 00:57:55,680
Speaker 1: Fitbit competing against other activity trackers, but also all the

949
00:57:55,760 --> 00:57:58,600
Speaker 1: smart watch companies that were building in those let's even

950
00:57:58,640 --> 00:58:03,040
Speaker 1: go even more complicated. Smartphones now can act as activity trackers.

951
00:58:03,440 --> 00:58:05,840
Speaker 1: A lot of smartphones have a built in app that

952
00:58:05,920 --> 00:58:09,160
Speaker 1: will count steps and maybe even do things like map

953
00:58:09,200 --> 00:58:12,440
Speaker 1: how many steps you've made against a physical map, or

954
00:58:12,760 --> 00:58:15,680
Speaker 1: tell you how much you've changed in altitude across the

955
00:58:15,760 --> 00:58:19,480
Speaker 1: day based upon where you went. All of these different

956
00:58:19,520 --> 00:58:23,760
Speaker 1: things are direct competitors or indirect competitors with activity trackers,

957
00:58:23,760 --> 00:58:27,640
Speaker 1: which meant that Fitbit was facing more and more pressures

958
00:58:27,880 --> 00:58:30,960
Speaker 1: from outside of its own company and had to figure

959
00:58:30,960 --> 00:58:35,200
Speaker 1: out ways to remain relevant and compelling to customers. Part

960
00:58:35,200 --> 00:58:39,040
Speaker 1: of that was again aiming at people who didn't want

961
00:58:39,080 --> 00:58:41,960
Speaker 1: to spend four hundred dollars five hundred dollars for a

962
00:58:42,000 --> 00:58:44,760
Speaker 1: smart watch. Maybe they'd spend a hundred dollars or a

963
00:58:44,800 --> 00:58:47,720
Speaker 1: hundred thirty dollars for an activity tracker, especially one that

964
00:58:47,800 --> 00:58:50,800
Speaker 1: had enough features in it to set it apart from

965
00:58:50,800 --> 00:58:55,800
Speaker 1: just a predominter. But it does mean that you're constantly

966
00:58:55,840 --> 00:58:58,760
Speaker 1: having to reinvent yourself and find ways of making products

967
00:58:58,760 --> 00:59:03,000
Speaker 1: that are interesting and use full and intuitive, and not

968
00:59:03,120 --> 00:59:06,680
Speaker 1: everything has gone smoothly. In two thousand and fourteen, the

969
00:59:06,680 --> 00:59:09,800
Speaker 1: company had to issue a recall of the fitbit Force,

970
00:59:10,200 --> 00:59:13,480
Speaker 1: which was one of the activity trackers that that you

971
00:59:13,520 --> 00:59:16,840
Speaker 1: would wear using a wristband. In fact, most of fitbits

972
00:59:16,880 --> 00:59:19,320
Speaker 1: trackers use a wristband, but not all of them. This

973
00:59:19,400 --> 00:59:22,040
Speaker 1: was one of them. There were quite a few people

974
00:59:22,120 --> 00:59:26,760
Speaker 1: who reported that they were having problems like skin issues

975
00:59:27,480 --> 00:59:29,720
Speaker 1: after wearing the wrist band, that it was causing them

976
00:59:29,760 --> 00:59:33,280
Speaker 1: to break out in a rash or sometimes worse, into blisters.

977
00:59:33,760 --> 00:59:37,600
Speaker 1: In fact, it got so bad that, according to some reports,

978
00:59:37,760 --> 00:59:41,520
Speaker 1: more than nine thousand people said they were having issues,

979
00:59:41,520 --> 00:59:43,640
Speaker 1: with more than two fifty of them saying that it

980
00:59:43,680 --> 00:59:47,680
Speaker 1: was blistering. And so eventually the company issued a recall

981
00:59:47,880 --> 00:59:50,640
Speaker 1: and discontinued the product and refunded people their money for

982
00:59:50,760 --> 00:59:54,760
Speaker 1: buying it because of these these problems. Now, the likely

983
00:59:54,800 --> 00:59:59,160
Speaker 1: reason behind all this was that the wrist band had

984
00:59:59,240 --> 01:00:01,200
Speaker 1: some components and that they were made out of nickel,

985
01:00:01,800 --> 01:00:04,240
Speaker 1: and a lot of people have an allergy of skin

986
01:00:04,280 --> 01:00:09,040
Speaker 1: allergy to nickel. Uh they can contract dermatitis if their

987
01:00:09,080 --> 01:00:12,439
Speaker 1: skin is in contact with nickel for too long. I'm

988
01:00:12,440 --> 01:00:14,760
Speaker 1: one of those people, and I didn't find out through

989
01:00:14,800 --> 01:00:17,480
Speaker 1: an activity tracker. Actually found out because I had a

990
01:00:17,520 --> 01:00:21,640
Speaker 1: silver plated ring and the the thing that the silver

991
01:00:21,840 --> 01:00:24,320
Speaker 1: was plating was a nickel core, right, it was a

992
01:00:24,400 --> 01:00:27,080
Speaker 1: ring with a nickel core but silver plating, And eventually

993
01:00:27,080 --> 01:00:29,680
Speaker 1: the silver on the inside the ring wore off enough

994
01:00:30,160 --> 01:00:33,120
Speaker 1: where the nickel was making contact with my skin and

995
01:00:33,160 --> 01:00:35,360
Speaker 1: it was a wide band ring and I started having

996
01:00:35,400 --> 01:00:38,000
Speaker 1: this terrible reaction. So if I had bought one of

997
01:00:38,040 --> 01:00:39,959
Speaker 1: those fitbits, I would have been one of the people

998
01:00:40,000 --> 01:00:44,080
Speaker 1: who had that that same issue. That skin irritation. Uh,

999
01:00:44,360 --> 01:00:47,200
Speaker 1: is not fun. And that did not do the company

1000
01:00:47,240 --> 01:00:49,800
Speaker 1: any favors. Although the fact that they did issue a

1001
01:00:49,880 --> 01:00:53,640
Speaker 1: recall was the right thing to do, um, but it

1002
01:00:53,680 --> 01:00:56,280
Speaker 1: was it was not a great publicity move to have

1003
01:00:56,520 --> 01:00:59,400
Speaker 1: something that gives your customers blisters all over their wrists.

1004
01:01:00,840 --> 01:01:03,320
Speaker 1: And then there's also been some legal battles. There was

1005
01:01:03,560 --> 01:01:06,400
Speaker 1: a couple of legal battles with Jawbone, which also makes

1006
01:01:06,440 --> 01:01:11,520
Speaker 1: activity trackers, and jaw Bone at one point alleged that

1007
01:01:11,640 --> 01:01:16,360
Speaker 1: fitbit had stole stolen corporate secrets from jaw Bone, that

1008
01:01:16,480 --> 01:01:21,680
Speaker 1: they were stealing patented work, and so they sued Fitbit.

1009
01:01:22,480 --> 01:01:25,960
Speaker 1: Later on, a court actually overturned the patents in question,

1010
01:01:26,080 --> 01:01:29,520
Speaker 1: so there was no foundation anymore for the lawsuit because

1011
01:01:30,480 --> 01:01:35,160
Speaker 1: the thing that had been a patented idea, the patented invention.

1012
01:01:35,760 --> 01:01:39,280
Speaker 1: The patent was invalidated, so there was no longer any

1013
01:01:39,400 --> 01:01:45,560
Speaker 1: legal claim for that. That particular lawsuit faded away. In October,

1014
01:01:46,600 --> 01:01:51,040
Speaker 1: James Park appeared on the program Mad Money to say

1015
01:01:51,040 --> 01:01:53,280
Speaker 1: the company as a whole was going to change direction

1016
01:01:53,320 --> 01:01:55,400
Speaker 1: and it was going to transition from what he called

1017
01:01:55,680 --> 01:02:01,080
Speaker 1: a consumer electronics company to a digital healthcare company. And

1018
01:02:01,120 --> 01:02:03,320
Speaker 1: he went on to say that the social aspect of

1019
01:02:03,360 --> 01:02:06,120
Speaker 1: what the company was doing would become more important in

1020
01:02:06,160 --> 01:02:08,560
Speaker 1: the future. Now, this may have been in response to

1021
01:02:08,600 --> 01:02:11,320
Speaker 1: a really rough year on the market in twenty sixteen.

1022
01:02:11,680 --> 01:02:17,520
Speaker 1: Fitbit saw their stock price drop steadily throughout the entire year.

1023
01:02:18,040 --> 01:02:21,040
Speaker 1: Uh the high price for a Fitbit stock over the

1024
01:02:21,120 --> 01:02:24,680
Speaker 1: last fifty two weeks was eighteen dollars forty three cents.

1025
01:02:24,720 --> 01:02:27,400
Speaker 1: Remember it was initially valued at twenty dollars before it

1026
01:02:27,440 --> 01:02:31,080
Speaker 1: opened on trading, back when they first went public. It

1027
01:02:31,160 --> 01:02:34,640
Speaker 1: went up to thirty dollars forty cents the that day,

1028
01:02:35,920 --> 01:02:39,920
Speaker 1: and now it's down to less than much less than

1029
01:02:39,960 --> 01:02:45,280
Speaker 1: that actually today, which is March. I checked the stock

1030
01:02:45,320 --> 01:02:47,120
Speaker 1: price and when I checked it, it was five dollars

1031
01:02:47,120 --> 01:02:51,360
Speaker 1: and thirty seven cents, So pretty massive fall off in

1032
01:02:51,440 --> 01:02:55,560
Speaker 1: stock price. The appearance on Mad Money was interesting and

1033
01:02:55,560 --> 01:02:58,640
Speaker 1: that Park said that Fitbit could help employers save money

1034
01:02:58,640 --> 01:03:01,880
Speaker 1: on providing healthcare plans for employees, and he cited a

1035
01:03:01,920 --> 01:03:05,760
Speaker 1: third party study that suggested employees who opted into a

1036
01:03:05,800 --> 01:03:11,680
Speaker 1: Fitbit wellness plan would cost employers twenty less than employees

1037
01:03:11,720 --> 01:03:16,120
Speaker 1: who did not enter the Fitbit wellness plan. So perhaps

1038
01:03:16,200 --> 01:03:18,680
Speaker 1: the future of fitbit is really in designing corporate wellness

1039
01:03:18,680 --> 01:03:21,760
Speaker 1: initiatives and the hardware will just kind of supplement that.

1040
01:03:22,960 --> 01:03:26,400
Speaker 1: And they've also been on acquisition tear recently. You may

1041
01:03:27,320 --> 01:03:33,400
Speaker 1: say that, uh that Fitbit essentially rated Pebble, because it

1042
01:03:33,440 --> 01:03:39,760
Speaker 1: wasn't so it wasn't like a standard acquisition. It was

1043
01:03:39,840 --> 01:03:43,400
Speaker 1: acquiring very specific parts of Pebble and taking just the

1044
01:03:43,440 --> 01:03:46,520
Speaker 1: parts they wanted. Pebble, by the way, in case you

1045
01:03:46,560 --> 01:03:48,240
Speaker 1: don't know, it's a company that was known for making

1046
01:03:48,240 --> 01:03:53,120
Speaker 1: relatively simple but interesting smart watches and it got started

1047
01:03:53,120 --> 01:03:57,600
Speaker 1: originally as a crowdfunding campaign. And the smart watches use

1048
01:03:57,640 --> 01:04:01,960
Speaker 1: an e paper display so that they're very low power. Uh,

1049
01:04:02,000 --> 01:04:05,640
Speaker 1: and they were able to give you notifications from your

1050
01:04:05,640 --> 01:04:11,040
Speaker 1: phone that kind of stuff. Fitbit bought out Pebbles software

1051
01:04:11,080 --> 01:04:15,360
Speaker 1: assets for less than forty million dollars according to Bloomberg

1052
01:04:15,400 --> 01:04:19,360
Speaker 1: Technology Now sadly, Pebble as a company actually had more

1053
01:04:19,400 --> 01:04:23,160
Speaker 1: than forty million dollars in debts, so they didn't even

1054
01:04:23,160 --> 01:04:24,960
Speaker 1: get as much as they needed in order to pay

1055
01:04:24,960 --> 01:04:27,880
Speaker 1: off their debts in this case, and Pebble had found

1056
01:04:27,920 --> 01:04:31,760
Speaker 1: that it was very difficult to thrive in a crowded marketplace,

1057
01:04:32,440 --> 01:04:34,520
Speaker 1: and it didn't help that you still have a significant

1058
01:04:34,520 --> 01:04:37,320
Speaker 1: population of people who aren't even convinced that smart watches

1059
01:04:37,480 --> 01:04:40,960
Speaker 1: are an interesting thing to buy in the first place. So,

1060
01:04:41,000 --> 01:04:44,160
Speaker 1: according to Bloomberg, Fitbit sent job offers to about fort

1061
01:04:44,880 --> 01:04:49,120
Speaker 1: of Pebble's workforce, meaning did not get an offer to

1062
01:04:49,160 --> 01:04:52,760
Speaker 1: work at Fitbit. And as someone who owns a Kickstarter

1063
01:04:53,040 --> 01:04:56,520
Speaker 1: edition Pebble watch, this whole thing made me very sad,

1064
01:04:56,960 --> 01:04:59,920
Speaker 1: not just because my watch would no longer be supported,

1065
01:05:00,480 --> 01:05:05,360
Speaker 1: but I really thought Pebble was something special, and there

1066
01:05:05,400 --> 01:05:07,760
Speaker 1: were a lot of folks who were eagerly anticipating Pebble's

1067
01:05:07,800 --> 01:05:09,880
Speaker 1: next product, and they were very dismayed to learn it

1068
01:05:09,880 --> 01:05:14,360
Speaker 1: will never come. But such as business. In January, Fitbit

1069
01:05:14,440 --> 01:05:18,720
Speaker 1: acquired a another smart watch group, a company that had

1070
01:05:18,760 --> 01:05:23,000
Speaker 1: started up just in March sixteen called Vector, so it

1071
01:05:23,040 --> 01:05:25,680
Speaker 1: wasn't even a year old when Fitbit came in and

1072
01:05:25,680 --> 01:05:28,920
Speaker 1: acquired it. Vector's market was to create what they called

1073
01:05:29,320 --> 01:05:33,920
Speaker 1: affordable luxury smart watches, so their designs kind of harkened

1074
01:05:33,920 --> 01:05:37,920
Speaker 1: back to classic European luxury watches, but at a lower cost,

1075
01:05:38,840 --> 01:05:43,320
Speaker 1: and they're smart watches, not your typical quartz crystal action watches.

1076
01:05:44,040 --> 01:05:46,440
Speaker 1: And like Pebble, the acquisition appears to have been a

1077
01:05:46,480 --> 01:05:50,000
Speaker 1: bid for the software developer talent. The founder of Vector,

1078
01:05:50,120 --> 01:05:53,280
Speaker 1: named Andre Petis, said as much, said that the company

1079
01:05:53,400 --> 01:05:57,920
Speaker 1: was acquired for this software platform and for its design team.

1080
01:05:57,960 --> 01:06:00,480
Speaker 1: So does that mean that Fitbit will soon produce luxury

1081
01:06:00,560 --> 01:06:05,240
Speaker 1: smart watches? Probably not. They may set all of these

1082
01:06:05,280 --> 01:06:08,320
Speaker 1: assets to work on creating those digital health care solutions

1083
01:06:08,320 --> 01:06:11,000
Speaker 1: that I mentioned earlier, and I suspect will continue to

1084
01:06:11,000 --> 01:06:15,560
Speaker 1: see Fitbit produce activity trackers and sensors, but that these

1085
01:06:15,600 --> 01:06:19,200
Speaker 1: will fit into a larger package of healthcare solutions, so

1086
01:06:19,280 --> 01:06:22,320
Speaker 1: that way Fitbit can continue to set itself apart from

1087
01:06:22,360 --> 01:06:25,840
Speaker 1: all the competing activity trackers companies out there. They're not

1088
01:06:26,000 --> 01:06:32,000
Speaker 1: just selling activity trackers, they're selling health itself. That's me

1089
01:06:32,680 --> 01:06:36,920
Speaker 1: saying that not Fitbit, and who knows, maybe in ten

1090
01:06:36,960 --> 01:06:40,280
Speaker 1: we will see some luxury smart watch activity trackers from Fitbit,

1091
01:06:40,680 --> 01:06:43,840
Speaker 1: and maybe they'll become the must have fashion accessory ofen.

1092
01:06:43,920 --> 01:06:47,200
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be shocked to see it happen, and I

1093
01:06:47,320 --> 01:06:49,560
Speaker 1: might even save up for one because I lack I

1094
01:06:49,680 --> 01:06:53,560
Speaker 1: lack looking all flash while tracking my steps. But we'll see.

1095
01:06:54,600 --> 01:06:56,320
Speaker 1: And that's all I've got on Fitbit right now. I

1096
01:06:56,320 --> 01:06:58,880
Speaker 1: could have talked a little bit more about some other elements,

1097
01:06:58,920 --> 01:07:03,520
Speaker 1: like there was a tie where Apple sold Fitbit products

1098
01:07:03,520 --> 01:07:06,200
Speaker 1: in its Apple Store, and then there was a very

1099
01:07:06,240 --> 01:07:08,880
Speaker 1: famous time when they said they would stop doing that.

1100
01:07:09,560 --> 01:07:13,000
Speaker 1: But you know, honestly, that story is not as interesting

1101
01:07:13,080 --> 01:07:16,360
Speaker 1: as it first sounds when you hear the connotation there.

1102
01:07:16,600 --> 01:07:18,960
Speaker 1: And besides, I gotta save something for future episodes now

1103
01:07:18,960 --> 01:07:21,520
Speaker 1: that I'm going to twice a week again. So I

1104
01:07:21,520 --> 01:07:24,760
Speaker 1: hope you guys enjoyed this glimpse into the company Fitbit

1105
01:07:24,880 --> 01:07:27,680
Speaker 1: and the explanation of how that technology works. If you

1106
01:07:27,720 --> 01:07:31,000
Speaker 1: have questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, you should

1107
01:07:31,080 --> 01:07:34,280
Speaker 1: let me know send me a note. You can send

1108
01:07:34,280 --> 01:07:37,040
Speaker 1: me an email at the address tech stuff at how

1109
01:07:37,120 --> 01:07:39,720
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or you can always contact me

1110
01:07:40,040 --> 01:07:44,080
Speaker 1: through Facebook or Twitter. I use the social handle text

1111
01:07:44,120 --> 01:07:47,920
Speaker 1: stuff HSW for the show at both locations. If you

1112
01:07:47,960 --> 01:07:51,240
Speaker 1: really want to, you can join me for a live chat.

1113
01:07:51,760 --> 01:07:55,440
Speaker 1: I live stream now. People are watching me say this

1114
01:07:55,880 --> 01:07:59,440
Speaker 1: at the moment I'm looking run into their little eyes.

1115
01:08:00,200 --> 01:08:02,160
Speaker 1: But yeah. You can join me on twitch dot tv

1116
01:08:02,280 --> 01:08:05,160
Speaker 1: slash tech stuff and you can watch me stream live.

1117
01:08:05,200 --> 01:08:07,440
Speaker 1: It also means you get to listen to the episode

1118
01:08:07,440 --> 01:08:09,280
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks before it even comes out, and

1119
01:08:09,320 --> 01:08:12,680
Speaker 1: you get to hear me make mistakes and stuff which

1120
01:08:12,760 --> 01:08:15,920
Speaker 1: hopefully you don't hear in the published podcast because Dylan

1121
01:08:16,040 --> 01:08:22,360
Speaker 1: fixes those. All right, that's it done. I'll talk to

1122
01:08:22,360 --> 01:08:31,519
Speaker 1: you again really soon for more on this and thousands

1123
01:08:31,560 --> 01:08:43,520
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com