Life360

Life360 Inc. is a San Francisco, California–based American information technology company that provides location-based services, including sharing and notifications, to consumers globally. Its main service is called Life360, a family social networking app released in 2008. It is a location-based service designed primarily to enable friends and family members to share their location with each other.

Life360 Inc.
Type of businessPublic
Traded asASX: 360
Founded2008 (2008)
HeadquartersSan Francisco, California, United States
Key people
  • Chris Hulls (Executive Director,
    Co-founder, and Chief Executive Officer)
  • Alex Haro (Executive Director, Co-Founder, and President)
  • John Philip Coghlan (Independent Non-Executive Chair)
RevenueIncrease US$228.3 million (2022)
URLlife360.com
UsersIncrease 48.6 million monthly active users (MAU) (December 2022)
Current statusActive
Native client(s) on
Life360
Family Locator - GPS Tracker (Android)
Find My Family, Friends, Phone (iOS)
Developer(s)Life360
Initial release2008 (Android); 2010 (iOS)
Stable release
Android21.3.1 / March 18, 2021 (2021-03-18)[1]
iOS21.3.2 / March 17, 2021 (2021-03-17)[2]
Operating systemiOS 11 and later
Android 8.0 and later
Windows Phone
Size120.5 MB iOS; 35 MB Android
Available inSpanish, German, Korean, Italian, Russian, Portuguese and Indonesian[3]
TypeLocation-based service
LicenseProprietary
Websitewww.life360.com Edit this on Wikidata

History

Life360 was founded by Chris Hulls and Alex Haro and has received a total of $90 million in funding since its launch, including funding from both Facebook and Google.[4] The app was initially released in 2008 in the Android marketplace.[5] The first funding for Life360 came in the form of a $275,000 grant as a winner of Google's 2008 Android Developer Challenge.[6] Additional funding included $5.5 million in a Series A round, $17 million in a Series B round, and $50 million in a Series C round.[4] Before going public, the company secured a total of 36 investors including Regal Funds Management, Sunstone Management, and several others.[7]

Life360 entered into an agreement with BMW in 2013 to integrate the location services of Life360 with the navigation in BMW automobiles.[5] The same year, Life360 surpassed Foursquare in the number of registered users with 34 million[5] and reached more than 40 million registered users the same year.[4] Life360 also saw an increase in user registration following the announcement from Google that they would be shutting down their Google Latitude platform in August 2013.[8]

In 2013, Life360 announced it would be adding global support for its app.[9]

In 2016, Life360 added a feature that enables smartphones to detect when people are in a car crash and automatically contacts emergency response.[10] In February 2016, Life360 acquired the private messaging application and Y Combinator grad "Couple" based in Mountain View, California.[11]

At CES in January 2018, ADT announced ADT Go in partnership with Life360. ADT Go connects and protects families outside the home, utilizing ADT's expansive security infrastructure.[12][13]

In May 2019, Life360 listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) under the ticker "360", raising proceeds totaling AU$145.4 million.[14][15] The majority of the funds raised are to be used to grow the business globally and develop home insurance and home security products as well as auto insurance sold directly to service its customers.[16]

In November 2019, the company acquired ZenScreen, a San Jose, California-based app that guides users and their families to track and attain screen time habits for a more balanced digital diet, for an undisclosed sum.[17] By December 2019, Life360 surpassed 27 million monthly active users (MAUs).[18]

In November 2021, Life360 agreed to acquire Tile in a $205 million acquisition,[19][20] and later announced integration of the two services, expanding Tile's tracking reach.[21]

Features

Life360 is a mobile application and was referred to as a "family-oriented private social network" by Bloomberg Businessweek.[9] The app is a social network for families and differentiates itself in this way as it is not based around peer groups or professional networks such as Find My Friends and LinkedIn. It allows users to share locations, group message, and call for roadside assistance.[22] It has four main features: location sharing, circles, places, and premium.

Location sharing

The main feature of the app is location sharing. Users can open the app and see where other members are instantly. Users can choose to share or not their location with any particular circle at any particular time.[23]

Circles

Circles is the app's newest feature, released on September 3, 2013. Circles allows users to create separate groups within the app, e.g. "caregivers", "extended family", and "John's baseball team." Users' location is only visible to those who are also in the circle, and members in "caregivers" cannot see the location of users in "extended family", unless they are also in that circle.[24]

Places

Life360 allows users to create geofences that alert them when another enters or leaves another location.[25]

Premium

Life360 operates as a freemium app, and users can pay for extra features.[9] These extra features include: stolen phone insurance, access to a live advisor 24/7, unlimited creation of "Places", and emergency roadside assistance (known as 'Driver Protect').[9]

Bubbles

CEO, Chris Hulls, created a TikTok account to initiate a dialogue with teenagers after intense criticism. Subsequently, Life360 released Bubbles which allows users to set a radius of between 1 and 25 miles and a set time frame of 1 to 6 hours. This means you won't be able to see where people are in the Bubbles however safety features and messaging features remain active.[26][27]

Criticism

An article by The Washington Post claims that parents are using the location sharing feature to track their teenage and adult children "in ways that resemble emotional abuse."[28]

An article by The Markup reported that Life360 sells its users' precise location data to data brokers. According to Life360's privacy policy, this data "does not reasonably identify you directly".[29] The company later claimed it was no longer selling this type of data.[30]

While tracking devices like Life360's Tile and Apple's AirTag were intended to help users find missing or stolen property, they have also been used maliciously, such as stalking people.[31] In August 2023, stalking victims filed a class-action lawsuit against Tile, Life360 and business partner Amazon for essentially promoting stalking, specifically "negligence, defective design, unjust enrichment, intrusion, and multiple privacy law violations".[32][33][34]

Awards and recognition

Life360 has received multiple awards including funding as winner of both Google Android Developer Challenge[6] and Facebook fbFund.[35] It received the People's Voice Award for Best Use of GPS or Location Technology at the 2012 Webby Awards.[36] The same year it received the Reader's Choice Award from About.com as the Coolest Parenting Teens Gadget Winner.[37]

References
  1. "Life360: Family Locator & GPS Tracker for Safety". Google Play. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
  2. "Find My Family, Friends, Phone". App Store. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
  3. "Life360 Doubles Down on Growth Efforts". Life360 (Press release). June 12, 2014. Retrieved June 12, 2014.
  4. Perez, Sarah (July 10, 2013). "Life360, The Family Locator With More Users Than Foursquare, Raises A $10 Million Series B". TechCrunch. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  5. Perez, Sarah (April 26, 2013). "Life360, A Family Networking App With more Users Than Foursquare, Is Now Headed For Cars, Smart Home Systems". TechCrunch. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  6. Siegler, MG (August 28, 2008). "Android Developer Challenge I winners – nary a big name in sight". Venture Beat. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  7. Lee, Allen (May 1, 2021). "20 Things You Didn't Know About Life360". Money Inc. Retrieved August 5, 2022.
  8. Riddell, Lindsay (July 24, 2013). "Life360 goes after Google Latitude's evicted users". San Francisco Business Times. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  9. Fitchard, Kevin (July 3, 2013). "Life360's App Knows Where Your Children Are". Bloomberg Businessweek. Archived from the original on July 6, 2013. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  10. Privat, Ludovic (May 27, 2016). "Life360 Adds Car Crash Detection and Automatic Emergency Call to App". GPS Business News. Archived from the original on May 27, 2016.
  11. Perez, Sarah (February 12, 2016). "Family App Life360 Acquires Couple, A Private Messaging App For Two". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 16, 2018.
  12. Price, Molly (January 8, 2018). "ADT unveils apps, doorbells and more at CES 2018". CNET. Retrieved February 2, 2018.
  13. Carney, Michael (May 14, 2014). "Prioritizing utility in its family social network, Life360 raises $50M from ADT to tackle the connected home". PandoDaily. Archived from the original on May 17, 2014.
  14. "Life360 Completes IPO on ASX". Business Wire. May 11, 2019. Retrieved August 8, 2019.
  15. Bailey, Michael (May 10, 2019). "Life360 passes first day of ASX litmus test". Australian Financial Review. Retrieved August 8, 2019.
  16. Duran, Paulina (April 18, 2019). "U.S. family tracking app Life360 launches $104 million Australian IPO". Reuters. Retrieved August 8, 2019.
  17. "Life360 Acquires ZenScreen". FinSMEs. November 6, 2019. Retrieved February 9, 2020.
  18. "December 2019 Quarterly Business Update and Appendix 4C" (PDF). Life360 Investor Relations. Retrieved February 2, 2020.
  19. Nellis, Stephen (November 22, 2021). "Apple critic Tile Inc acquired by Life360 in $205 mln deal". Yahoo!Finance. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
  20. Lawler, Richard (November 22, 2021). "Tile is selling its Bluetooth tracking business to Life360 for $205 million". The Verge. Retrieved December 7, 2021.
  21. Perez, Sarah (November 3, 2022). "Life360 to integrate its service with Tile, following last year's acquisition". TechCrunch.
  22. McCurdy Crooks, Jessica (July 24, 2015). "Life360 app stay connected with family and friends". The Appzine. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016.
  23. Dickinson, Boonsri (June 20, 2011). "Life360 turns your smartphone into a lifeline". CNET. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  24. Fitchard, Kevin (September 4, 2013). "Life360 moves beyond the nuclear family, adding social features to its tracking app". Gigaom. Archived from the original on November 13, 2013. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  25. Yeung, Ken (December 18, 2012). "Life360, the location app for families, nears 25m users; adds geo-fencing feature and local crime data". The Next Web. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  26. Perez, Sarah (October 12, 2020). "Family-tracking app Life360 launches 'Bubbles,' a location-sharing feature inspired by teens on TikTok". TechCrunch.
  27. "What is Bubbles?". Life360. 2021.
  28. Ohlheiser, Abby (October 22, 2019). "'Don't leave campus': Parents are now using tracking apps to watch their kids at college". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 23, 2019.
  29. Keegan, John (December 6, 2021). "The Popular Family Safety App Life360 Is Selling Precise Location Data on Its Tens of Millions of Users". The Markup. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
  30. Keegan, John (January 6, 2022). "Life360 Says It Will Stop Selling Precise Location Data". The Markup. Retrieved March 14, 2022.
  31. "Tile thinks a $1 million fine will deter stalkers from using its trackers". Engadget. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
  32. "Alleged Stalking Victims Accuse Tile of Advertising Its Devices as Women Trackers". Yahoo News. August 17, 2023. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
  33. Karabus, Jude. "Stalking victims sue Tile, Amazon over trackers". www.theregister.com. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
  34. Arkansas law firm sues Tile creators after stalking issues with device, retrieved August 20, 2023
  35. Kincaid, Jason (May 28, 2009). "Facebook Names First Class of fbFund REV, Its New Incubator". TechCrunch. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  36. "Best use of GPS or Location Technology". Webby Awards. 2012. Retrieved October 28, 2013.
  37. Witmer, Denise (2012). "Coolest Parenting Teens Gadget Winner: Life360 Family Locator". About.com. Archived from the original on January 20, 2013.
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