After roughly five months of appeasing users with new feature after new feature after new feature, the other shoe has finally dropped. Today, Strava sold its segmented soul. At least, if you believe Strava Segments are the soul of what makes Strava, well, Strava.
The company announced three substantial negative changes to the platform effective immediately, which will have huge ramifications for its 55 million users, as well as the 44,000 registered 3rd party apps. They are summarized as follows:
– Non-paying users will no longer see the full leaderboard: They’ll only see the top 10 times (all + Top 10 women), you won’t see your friends anymore
– Strava is removing the leaderboard from all 3rd party apps: If you’re using one of the 44,000 3rd party apps out there to do anything with Segments, this likely just broke it. Only devices like those from Garmin/Wahoo/Hammerhead/etc that have Strava Live Segments can display that for paying members.
– Non-paying users will no longer get the web route builder: If you want to build routes, you’ll need to use another platform.
In addition to those substantial ones, there’s also one lesser removal:
– Non-paying users will no longer get ‘matched runs’ feature: This will automatically compare runs on the same route from a pace/speed standpoint. A new matched rides feature is introduced today, which is only available to paying users.
One might mistakenly believe this change is only impacting non-paying users. But that’s far from true. This change is impacting anyone who uses the platform with 3rd party apps to do any amount of analysis of Segments. And even beyond that, it’s lessening the value of Segments for everyone. Strava is in effect saying: Segments don’t really matter to our business anymore, getting people to pay for them does.
And here’s the worst part: They aren’t necessarily wrong on that specific issue. In a conference call last week, Strava was point-blank clear that if they don’t get more subscribers and become profitable, there’s a pretty good chance there won’t be a Strava in a year. [Update: 26 hours later, Strava disagrees with this summary of that portion of the call, stating only that “We are not yet a profitable company and need to become one in order to serve athletes better”.]
Is some of that posturing? Probably.
But is the undercurrent of it true? Most likely. You can only run an unprofitable business so long when people stop giving you money.
Still, my take is that this is less about Strava’s goals of being profitable, and more about the way they’re going about it. Instead of adding value and new features to the platform and convincing people to convert, they’re pulling the rug out from both free and paid users alike. They’re using the stick, instead of the carrot. And historically speaking – that doesn’t improve customer satisfaction.
Finally, it should be noted that while Strava is slashing and burning today, they did roll out a few new (positive) changes for premium users. First of all, you got a new desktop (web) route builder which better integrates Strava Segments and terrain filters (e.g. gravel vs not, more elevation option, etc…), and you also got some redesigned elements of the mobile app around training load tracking. Some of it is new functionality, a lot of it is mostly cleaned up user interface design. Those will show up in iOS/Android app version v150 starting today, but may take up to 48 hours for everyone to see. The restrictions will appear immediately. On a normal day I might have covered that more in-depth, but today is not a normal day.
Leaderboard Changes:
This first change only impacts non-paying users. By the way, while we’re at it, as of today Strava is ditching the ‘Summit’ moniker it created two summers ago. Now, you’re simply a ‘subscriber’ or not. Meaning, you’re either paying or not. If you’re not paying, Strava wants you to pay – and they’re even giving you a 60-day trial to test things out. Mind you, you’ll have to provide a credit card first, and if you forget to cancel in mid-July you’ll become one of those paying subscribers.
In any case, as of today, non-paying users will no longer see the full leaderboard. The ‘leaderboard’ is basically what is shown when you look up a Strava segment. It manifests itself in a few different ways, including mini-leaderboards and full leaderboards. For example, here’s a mini-leaderboard. You can see not only the top 10, but my self and my stats on it.
However, when I view the full leaderboard, I get additional key information – notably the ‘People I’m following’ and ‘My Clubs’, as well as ‘My results’ and ‘This Year’. Plus age groups and weight classes too. If you’re a non-paying member, you’ll get none of this going forward (you previously didn’t get ages/weights unless a subscriber).
In this context, if I was a non-paying member, I wouldn’t be able to see that I’m faster than GPLAMA here. It simply wouldn’t show up anymore, as if it didn’t exist. And frankly, I can’t have that.
Same goes for my group membership in the Slowtwitch.com ‘Club’, that too would go away, here on a different segment:
Free users can still create segments, as well as use the segment explorer to look at/search for segments. They can also see the KOM/QOM (due to being allowed to see the Top 10/10 Top 10 Female), as well as they can see their own PR’s.
To be very specific, here’s what non-paying users will see going forward:
Free users:
• Top 10 all-time and top 10 women Results in Leaderboard
• New Segment Creation is allowed
• Segment Detail screen is allowed (just not leaderboard details)
• Segment Explore / Search is allowed
• Flagging Segments is allowed
• Activity achievements is shown on a ride (KOM’s, CR’s, PR’s)
Paying Subscribers only:
• All segment leaderboards (including following/clubs/this year/age groups/weight classes)
• Analyze segment efforts
• Compare your results
• Analyze your efforts
So, here’s (on the mobile app), what a non-paying member should see starting today, and what happens if they try and do anything:
![clip_image002[4]](https://media.dcrainmaker.com/images/2020/05/clip_image0024.png "clip_image002[4]")
Now – obviously, if you don’t care about segments, then you probably won’t care about this.
I think though this lessens the value of Strava Segments for everyone, because it makes it far less interesting/valuable to non-paying users. They won’t care what their friends do, because they can’t see what their friends do. And if a tree falls in the forest…who cares? In other words, your friends that aren’t subscribers won’t bother competing with you on Segments anymore, because they can’t see the results of it.
And of course – this perhaps gets to the core of Strava’s realization: They’re far less a network about segment KOM’s than they are now a social fitness network. As much as Strava has resisted that aura being applied to them in the past, that’s what they are today. And it’s probably not untrue. I personally don’t care much about segments in my day to day riding (and certainly not running). I use Strava for essentially three things:
A) Finding/Building routes
B) Posting my activities and photos for others to see
C) Looking at what my real-life friends have posted recently
And that’s it.
Segments don’t appreciably enter into my day to day usage of Strava (unless I’m beating Lama on a segment when he doesn’t realize it, obviously). Of course, we’re all different. If you’re out there hunting segments with Strava Live Segments or Xert, awesome, more power to you. It’s clear that Strava wants you to have a subscription though, otherwise Segments are mostly useless.
3rd Party App Access:
Out of all the things they’re doing here, this is one of the most irritating ones. Mainly, because of how they’re doing it. Effective today at the exact same time this post publishes, Strava will break some portion of those 44,000 apps. The same app developers that have furthered Strava’s business and reach, Strava has decided to give zero notice to.
Of course, Strava counters they did notify a handful of ”larger developers” ahead of time. But most didn’t get notice. For those, Strava says:
“We realize these API changes could be especially challenging for some developers, so they’ll be non-breaking for 30 days, returning empty data during that time so they can make necessary adjustments. After June 18th, those endpoints will either omit the data or return an error message.”
Which is hilariously crass.
Here, let me translate what they’re saying for you into plain English:
“We realize that this is probably gonna break some (ok, most) apps. So instead of giving you time to fix your apps, we’re just gonna do it anyways and instead give you empty data that confuses your end users and app design, so this way it appears your app is broken – not Strava’s. Good deal?
I’m not aware of any reputable software development platform that gives zero notice to their development customers before breaking their apps. The appropriate course of action here would have been to give their 3rd party developer partners at least a month to update their apps to deal with this significant change. Most companies give many many months for upcoming deprecated features.
Plus – if the tables had been turned, and it was Amazon AWS (Strava’s hosting provider), and they simply sent them a note one morning and said: “Don’t worry, we’re just sending you empty data from your databases effective immediately.” – I’m guessing Strava wouldn’t feel the same way.
Look – I get why Strava needs to deprecate this feature. If they let 3rd party developers access it, then people could just go to 3rd party apps to get the leaderboards which are only available to paying members. But I’m not clear why they had to burn the house down to do it today at 10AM Pacific Time. If they didn’t break apps for 30 days, would that have really been such a big deal?
Strava likely still would have converted those users that cared about in-app access, without breaking their partner ecosystem. An ecosystem that at every turn is wary of Strava’s apparent habit of killing of apps that get too close, or too useful to users.
But even in the larger apps, there are features that will go away. Take for example VeloViewer, within this Zwift Insider leaderboard section. You’ll still see the segment placings (and times for non-paying users) – so in effect for non-paying users, it becomes more of a check-list of to-do’s, than a leaderboard of standings.
But wait – why is VeloViewer different than other apps? Well, apparently a small number of apps retain leaderboards, but only to show to Strava subscribers. VeloViewer has detailed the nuances here, which still involve less features now for non-paying Strava users. They’re the only app I’ve been made aware of that retains full leaderboard API access (aside from actual devices with Strava Live Segments).
Some aspects of VeloViewer that include leaderboards won’t change though. For example, the ‘Leaderboard’ tab on a given segment won’t change, because it is actually just an embed from Strava’s public site which shows the overall leaderboard + Top 10 women.
That’s still permitted, but isn’t done programmatically anymore. They’re just using the ‘Embed on Blog’ feature to get that to display:
I asked Strava exactly what was changing developer-wise, and they noted the following specific items from the API:
Segment Leaderboard data is not available anymore
- /api/v3/segments/:id/leaderboard
Segment Effort data is available for subscribers (but not non-paying users)
- /api/v3/segments/:id
- /api/v3/segments/:id/streams
- /api/v3/segment_efforts [Updated]
- /api/v3/segment_efforts/:id/streams
- /api/v3/activities/:id
*Note: An earlier version of this post included additional API deprecations. Strava has since changed the listings and corrected errors in their documentation that included those earlier added items. The current/final list is also now shown correctly here.
So basically, that first single line item above simply says “kill off segment result data”. Here’s what that API call did before today. Even if you’re not a developer, you can see (in yellow), what’s being killed off. To be clear, everything below is killed. But the yellow parts make it clear that they’re doing this so you can’t get the other premium leaderboard features via apps.
Meanwhile, the other ones that are allowed for paying members means that apps can still get individual efforts for the given authenticated athlete, but not segment-specific data like people within a leaderboard category such as following or age groups. So basically, as a paying member of Strava, I could still use App XYZ to track my specific pedaling on that segment (with things like cadence/heart rate/etc…), but not my rank (unless I ranked in the Top 10 – which pulls via DetailedSegmentEffort – ”kom_rank”).
Look, API changes and deprecations are a normal part of hosting a web platform. What’s not normal is how Strava is handling this. That’s the part they need to be called out for.
Route Builder Changes:
As part of the May 18th changes, Route Builder got a complete overhaul. They’ve added in new map styles, added sport type filters, show segments directly on the Route Builder, and also have a new surface type and increased elevation features.
But, if you’re not a paying member, you’ll never see it.
As of today, non-paying members lose access to the Route Builder entirely. Up until this point, any member could use the Route Builder for free. Going forward, non-paying members can no longer create routes within Strava, except as to copy an existing route from someone else (or your own ride). Existing routes you have in your account remain.
Here’s the two route builders side by side. At left is the new one. At right is the older one:
The main change here aside from all the user interface elements and map styling, is the addition of surface type preference – similar to what was added to mobile a month or two ago:
And along the bottom you’ll see a breakout of the surface type, just as you do on mobile now:
You can also now toggle segments within the map builder directly:
Previously you could ‘minimize elevation’, but now you can also ‘maximize elevation’, in case you have a soft spot for hills:
And they’ve incorporated the dark map them from the heat maps into the Route Builder, which is toggleable on the side. The other three map types, as well as heatmaps, were already viewable in the Route Builder.
Look, the new changes are nice. Nothing earth-shattering, though a nice clean-up.
The only problem? Likely less than 5% of Strava’s 50 million users will ever see them. Why? They’re not paying members.
Wrap-Up:
I’m sure Strava will think this post is overly negative, not highlighting enough of the new changes introduced today. And perhaps that’s the case – but I honestly don’t think those new feature adds are that big a deal. The Route Builder does have some minor nice new additions, but the training updates seem mostly to be more UI tweaks and filtering options than anything major. There’s some value to be had there, sure, but not as much value as is being lost today (for all users).
And look, I get it, Strava needs to find a way to make money. Every company should – that’s why they’re a company and not a non-profit. As part of a letter going out to all users today from their founders, they outline that part well, saying:
“This means that, starting today, a few of our free features that are especially complex and expensive to maintain, like segment leaderboards, will become subscription features. And from now on, more of our new feature development will be for subscribers – we’ll invest the most in the athletes who have invested in us. We’ve also made subscription more straightforward by removing packs and the brand of Summit. You can now use Strava for free or subscribe, simple.
This focus on subscription ensures that Strava can serve athletes decades from now, and in an up-front way that honors the support of the athletes we serve today. We plan to take what we earn from these changes and reinvest straight back into building more and better features – not devising ways to fill up your feed with ads or sell your personal information. We simply want to make a product so good that you’re happy to pay for it.”
But I think there’s still tons of value being left on the table that they can focus on in terms of new features to bring to people that would drive paying member adoption, rather than pulling features away that have been there a decade or so.
For example – why can’t clubs/teams create shared Strava routes that automatically sync into the team members’ accounts based on upcoming rides on a team calendar? Or, the ability for clubs to have a group routes page that includes a list of all popular routes that you could easily sync to your device. That would be a huge driver towards membership.
Or why can’t Strava Beacon then automatically integrate across teams/clubs so that people know where everyone is on a group ride? Or perhaps leveraging vehicle density/speed data integration already being gathered, into route builder as I floated this weekend. Or…or…or. There are countless ideas that people can come up with that would drive subscription revenue. All of which could be Summit paid-only features.
I’m just not convinced gutting Segments and routes for non-paying members is the right direction there. Nor is poorly communicating to your development community. But maybe I’m wrong.
With that – thanks for reading.
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I subscribed for years. Then came all the “trash” activities in my feed, mainly friend’s Zwift workouts, but walking, etc. and where does it stop? I, and many others, pleaded for filters for the feed. Years have gone by, and rather than this very needed feature, they give me additional fluff. I have been assuming Zwift pays them a massive amount of money.
Strava, I will again be a paying customer when you give me filters for my feed. Not a dime beforehand.
The Strava account has been deleted. I see my rides on Garmin maps. I have better ideas on how to spend a few dollars – I can buy beer for my friends on a ride.
Competing on segments was fun but to pay for such a simple function?
At Garmin Connect, I created more important segments where I compete with myself, not with packed steroids cheaters.
There were many companies in other industries in the past like Strava, arrogance lost them. I don’t see the point in having a Strava account in this situation, so it goes to delete.
Garmin Connect segments are enough for me.
Since I came to the realisation that I can’t beat anyone, segments on Strava lost their appeal ?. But I do have interest in comparing my efforts on the same ride/run, and on my training record. Other paid features weren’t of interest because I’m a casual exerciser and it’s about keeping myself motivated mostly.
Since Strava removed previously free features, it’s made Strava less attractive to me as an app. And perhaps this is stravas goal? To get rid of freeloaders like me?
Anyway, the training calendar is no longer available in Strava. And ‘matched runs’ no longer works. Both these things are important to me as a casual exerciser.
Not surprisingly, I’ve gone in search of another app. I’ve been impressed with Sports Tracker by Amer sports. Matched runs, training diary and lots of goodies! (And no, I’m not associated with them in any way).
I’ll probably continue to record in Strava for the social aspects, but sports Tracker will become my primary app for recording runs and keeping statistics from now on. (I’ll record on both on runs). And if I can talk my mates into changing over too, bye bye Strava!?
Sports Tracker (which I just downloaded) is not compatible with Garmin, Polar, etc.
So what is the point of this app? I’m not going to use my phone and I’m definitely not going to use an Apple Watch or Suunto for running.
Just noticed there isn’t a men’s leaderboard for segments on the free version, only women or everyone.
Not a big deal I suppose, but a smidge disappointing to be told I’m in the top 10 but then not be able to see it (I’m only top 10 for men, not top 10 for everyone)
I understand that they need to make money somehow. I have used both the free version and paid plan previously. Currently I’m back on the free version.
My issue is that I’m not an “athlete”. I workout a couple of times a week because of the health benefits but don’t do races or anything like that. The data adds a bit of fun but that is it for me. I would like to see maybe a time based option. I.e. you can workout X number of hours in a week or month and after that Strava behaves like the free version. That way there could be two tiers for paying customers.
Totally agree. I’m not an athlete but liked the segment feature to compare progress against friends. I’ve had premium & free versions, currently on free version as I didn’t want/need the premium features. A middle ‘enthusiast’ tier would have suited me and I would have paid for it. Whereas now I have stopped my Garmin from syncing with Strava. Some of the Garmin Connect features aren’t even available in Strava.
Strava Survey Results: Here’s a link to the results thus far. If this group is representative of the larger Strava community at large, Strava may have some big problems. At present, about 30% of the community intends to continue using Strava (paid or unpaid). Less than 5% of the community intends to shift from free to paid. Strava will ultimately get new paid users in the short run but could lose up to 70% of the user community which will have a damaging effect on the network benefits of the app.
On a positive note, Strava could have their cake and eat it too if they put in a more reasonably priced solution for those that just want their old features back. The average price equates to about $20-$25/year.
link to surveymonkey.com
Have to agree with your article. I am an embarrassed ‘non-payer’. I understand that Strava need to turn a coin, but I feel £48 a year is slightly too much for me to pay just to be able to build routes or judge myself against my real life friends & fellow club riders. Especially when I’m already subscribing to Zwift at god knows how much per month.
If it was slightly less I would pay up without hesitation. I believe the main issue is they gave too much away for free for too long in the first instance.
Still can’t make up my mind what to do……..
I’m not paying so much money for the app. 25Eur a year is reasonable and I did pay for it last year just to support them even if my statistics are showing 0. All my activities are different then they offer in the statistics.
60eur is a lot of money to pay for something I don’t have a full data to look for! Unfortunately I’ll have to break up with you Strava. You should be sad. It’s not me it’s you!
I’m looking towards the new alternatives ?
Is it just me or is GAP (grade adjusted pace) no longer available to free users
GAP was always a bit hit & miss (ie only appeared sometimes) but yes it doesn’t seem to be on *any* of my runs now, even the very steep ones
I knew I’d lose the GAP graph, but surprised not to see the single overall number either
I find the inverted nature of the data availability a problem — i can see the top 10 on a segment but can’t see my own top 10 results on the segment. So the latter is *MY* data not what Strava is bringing to the table.
But what you are looking for the the organization of “your data” that Strava brings. That’s where they are adding value.
Personally I’m torn on this issue, I don’t like what they did. But I do miss the features they took away. And it probably is worth $60/ year compared to other things that I spend money on. But I don’t like that they took it away. So I’m just mad at them. I probably won’t ever subscribe. But I can’t say never.
I have subscribed to Strava in the past, but don’t now. I won’t be subscribing to get access to what had been put behind a paywall. I respect that Strava need to make money or they won’t survive, but I think they’ve gone about this in the wrong way. They have a huge amount of our data that we’ve uploaded, and could (with our permission, obviously) analyse this data and use it to build new features that people are willing to pay for or even to sell to advertisers who can sell us products for which Strava gets a cut. If Strava wants to get more subscribers it would do well with keeping a lot of non paying people using it and then adding features that they will really want to pay for. There will be many, like me, who will just stop using it and that in the long term will hurt them. The reason I stopped paying for Summit access was that I just didn’t use those features to make it worth their while. I think the failure is with the lack of vision and brains behind the running of Strava to make features that people are willing to pay for and instead have just turned around and said “what do our users use the most”, and then just put that behind a pay wall.
As for the point that it is our data they are restricting and your response that they add value to it, well the problem is that it isn’t particularly advanced analysis just displaying the times of segments you’ve run from your own runs and someone will come along and just provide this so whilst its gone now it won’t be for long. Strava can’t own segments, they are just part of runs, and I can still go onto each of my runs and view my times for these segments and so this data will be freely available and replicatable in the near future I’m sure. So I really think Strava is shooting themselves in the foot here and this will come back to bite them. Their PR on what they’ve been doing is also awful. If everything going forward was put behind a paywall then I’d not be that bothered, if they’d done the same with leaderboards or other athlete’s data then again fair enough, but for features that have been there for the best part of the past decade to suddenly be told needs to be paid for, by what I head from a Strava spokesman due to it costing money to process the data just makes me laugh. They have these systems already in place, their business is basically using the data I’ve given them for free so I don’t see why they just can’t get on with it and create a viable business. They’ve just been very negligent in doing this.
“I’m sure Strava will think this post is overly negative”
No, I love this post and DCRainmaker in general.. why ? Because he is independent and will give his honest opinion. Not sure why people are bashing him for speaking so honestly.
He’s so right! Strava built the segments with user’s data and now they are asking money to use your it ? WHAT ?
Instead of paying Strava’s subscription, I’ll give it to Ray so we can continue having unbias reviews, end of story.
Keep up the great work Ray!
About Training log, you can check this: link to sportulparebun.ro
What I’m most annoyed about is that the club compare has been removed for free users.
It’s been a great deal of the excitement participating in club challenges with my local club, a family strava club and a friends club.
I’m pretty sure that strava cannot convince my club, family and friends to all pay for this feature in the future, so as per de facto it is missed. Which is as great shame.
Solely comparing paying club members just doesn’t make sense, since you want to compare all your frinds in a Strava club.
I’m not aware of Club Challenges. Was/is there a tab in the Challenge showing a club leaderboard?
I’m 99% sure you can still see the club leader boards & everyone on it whether they pay or not. I never noticed it missing, & I always used to check it. When I go on it now I can see both subscribers & non-subscribers. (Can’t be 100% certain as I’ve now gone to the dark side – maybe for only 60 free days though).
Let me try to understand this (yes, it’s already a few weeks old, but still). First they ignore users’ complaints for years, and don’t fix what is broken. And now they start to fix things, but make the whole package less attractive? Sounds like a plan for the future indeed!
Great article. I want to bring up the fact that non paying users can now only create private segments.
In fact it seems that they made all segments from non-paying users private. This means that many of the segments I used to benchmark against are gone.
At least that happened to virtual efforts in RGT
That change was actually a month or so before, but isn’t related to paid/non-paid users. It was merely Zwift trying to clean-up Virtual segments. Details here: link to zwiftinsider.com
For non-Zwift platforms though, the general consensus seems to be that Strava overstepped a bit.
It seems like a company founded by teenagers with no real world business sense. They talk among themselves and pat each others backs and ignore user input. Sad, great user base and so much potential.
Teenagers would do a better job – Strava is run like a company headed by boomers that have no idea how the internet, apps, or social networks function.
Just this week, yesterday actually or maybe the day before, I realized that the view of the segments on a specific ride no longer includes the delta to the KOM, or the delta to my PR, or the my PR for this year. Also, my percentage effort on the segment. Where did all those things go? I’d post a picture but I never thought I would need to capture that view.
Those sound like features from link to thomaschampagne.github.io and not features that were ever in Strava.
If Strava knew how to cost effectively host their servers they would probably make money, they use AWS, beyond a certain scale that’s not cost effective (about the $25K mark).
That said they should have ignored feedback and gone down the Advertising route, like all other Social Media Platforms, FB and Insta. People say NO, but they don’t really care.
I gave Stava my Data for years, now they want to charge me for the agregation of that into a product set. Sorry never going to pay for my own data shared with others.
Completely agree with Ian G
“If Strava knew how to cost effectively host their servers they would probably make money, they use AWS, beyond a certain scale that’s not cost effective (about the $25K mark).
That said they should have ignored feedback and gone down the Advertising route, like all other Social Media Platforms, FB and Insta. People say NO, but they don’t really care.
I gave Stava my Data for years, now they want to charge me for the agregation of that into a product set. Sorry never going to pay for my own data shared with others.”
Strava (like Zwift) doesn’t really care what people comment, that part of the app is just for show. Oh they have people who occasionally respond to complaints posted (my complaint about Segment Search being awful got maybe one response from Strava personnel) but overall nothing comes of it and people are just supposed to let it go.
As I’ve said before, Strava is going down a rather dangerous path. Since they refuse to accept data processing from established vendors (Garmin et al) and say they want to do their own data processing (which always seems to be a little slower and a little less everything than others) there’s really no reason to trust the way they generate their metrics…and further, it has made their system less less trustworthy since my speed / power / distances always seem to be less on Strava.
But beyond that, the Segments feature (which now has some dubious restrictions) is the ONLY thing they have that sets them apart from other data aggregators. And in fact it looks like that feature is now so clogged with segments that even the ‘live segments’ option (requires payment) is so annoying that its destroying the one feature that cyclists actually like.
At any rate, if Strava is wanting to become the social media ‘location’ for athletes they’ve waited too long, the importance of social media…anymore…which itself is waning due to the dishonest data aggregation side of the business.
Public angst against FB currently, should be a warning sign for what other social media sites could face in the future, and it could spell the end for FB much like the now ghostly MySpace. And even if it doesn’t, it does suggest that political affiliationism on the part of corporates etc will not be tolerated. In the past corporate entities have avoided that topic but no more, and that might be the biggest limiting factor for SM expansion; the division of customers along political lines, and that won’t be good for business.
At any rate, SM popularity is on a decline and for good reason. People just need to get outside and be social…anything else is arguably fake and not good for personal well being, and that’s aside from the data acquisition part of SM dishonesty. And in reality it’s not very social anyway…and I believe people are figuring this out…finally. That includes athletics data aggregators like Strava as well. Sorry Strava, you’re about a decade too late too participate…
As for the data metrics Strava wants to sell back to you there are better options I think, some that may charge a fee but have been around longer and are more trusted with athletes to provide a path forward for performance gains.
I have a background in membership and subscription marketing and this issue in my mind has always been the lack of a tier membership model. It really makes you wonder who’s running their strategy group. Early on they should have had a very basic version available for say $1/month. Most everyone would be ok with that. Then, of course, you have more robust versions available to members who want/need those functions. You market your product to your membership base trying to get them to upgrade, pay for special events, etc. I never understood why they were giving away a product that people would pay for while at the same time trying to still a loaded version for more than most want to spend. Major business and marketing fail in my opinion.
If you don’t offer a free account, you will only have paid members.. problem solved.. shareholders run EVERY publicly traded company, and are never satisfied, But I guess the amount of people with Garmin devices do not count.. and are invisable on strava.. Not.
We just lost access to how many miles we’ve run this week (in the app) – on the website it still works fine. Is this Strava’s new strategy? Instead of adding features – we’re just going to keep taking stuff away until you either leave – or pay us.
It would sure be swell if there was a way (even if paid for) that you could see everyone that you follow’s weekly/monthly and yearly mileage in a report. Maybe think about adding stuff instead of this continued disparity between the app and the website where you have to look in both places to find stuff.
I haven’t used Strava that much lately but I have just started training again and just found out that you have to subscribe just to check your own history and comparisons! I don’t care about comparing to others but not being able to check my own history blows. I’ll be deleting Strava and sticking with Garmin Connect from now on.
Obviously this is a high risk change for Strava, and probably not done in the best way.
A few years ago I became a subscriber because:
“Every dollar you spend . . . or don’t spend . . . is a vote you cast for the world you want.”
I felt that that I should positively “vote” for something that enriches my personal lifestyle. £1 a week is seriously less than a cup of coffee (which I love as well) and yearly is 1/4 of the cost of the device I bought to record GPS with in the first place.
Thanks for the article. Very informative. DCR is awesome.
This is a little off topic, but not much. I ride/race road, mtb, swim, run etc. I also ride and race enduros, hard enduros and hare scrambles on a motorcycle. It’s physically demanding. Lots of people in the motorsports world do those kinds of cross training. I and people like me have approached Strava many times about including a motorsports category. They’ve declined repeatedly. Lots of fitness oriented people might not like the addition of a motorsports category, but there’s money to be made there. If Strava is in trouble, maybe including the dark underbelly of motorsports would help them. There’s money in the moto world. 🙂
I understand the arguments against including a moto category. But there are some pluses. It would also help keep moto people from polluting the leader boards. As for me, I just quit using Strava and went elsewhere. But, I’d pay if they gave us a moto option. I ride with people that just do human powered activities too. Having one app to keep track of and interact with both sides of that coin would be nice. Till then, I’ll just use something else that caters to both crowds. Ride with GPS seems to fit the bill now.
If they can’t find a way to survive with zillions of users, they should die a slow death.
We don’t pay for google, do we? They figured out how to monetize spying on us, despite our advert avert vision.
It was nice for a while, with garmin connect and tapiirik.
Maybe Garmin seizes the opportunity and resuscitates their segment feature.
Tremendously helpful, thank you for investing the time to share this information. I am left wondering, however, is there enough value to the data I provide free of charge to Strava? It’s very personal data that is specific to me, and I’m fairly open to letting Strava use my data to create a platform that I feel is useful to me.
But these new developments has me thinking I’m giving Strava too much for what I get in return. Before I used a Garmin, like many people, and then I started using Strava and stopped using the Garmin. But now I can’t look at my collective data that I gave Strata – it’s by design very hard for me to look at how well I’ve done in previous trips out, and that is something I’m very interested in seeing.
But I’m not going to pay Strava $15 a month to look at data I created when I can do that with my Garmin for free like I’ve always done. Did I like the interface? Yes, I like the Strava interface very much, but not enough to pay to see my data that I gave them for free.
Thanks again.
Strava only recently started “Matched Rides”, which is exactly allowing you to see how you’ve done in “previous trips out”. Maybe they don’t do that for runners? It’s annoying looking back using the “Training Calendar”, but no more annoying than the calendar on Garmin Connect. I managed to look at an x-c ski activity from 2015 in seconds. It was actually a little less annoying on Strava than seeing the full details of that activity on Garmin Connect. So I don’t understand the criticism.
Yes, flybys are hosed for now, and it’s weird that they’re suddenly worried about privacy on flybys after having them around for so long. I used to look at my flybys on occasion, for now it’s just not worth doing. That doesn’t mean they’ve wrecked Strava.
I had wondered how long it would take Strava to ‘become concerned’ about the privacy factor on the flyby viewing option, however, there are controls that people can use even now that block being included in flyby. I know one person in my sphere that uses that feature.
As for the current demise of the flyby feature, who really cares? Strava is just doing more virtue signaling about something that should be the responsibility of cyclist / runner to begin with, and furthermore, if someone is concerned about that why even use Strava to begin with?
One thing that this latest debacle by Strava has shown me, the reprogramming to remove features, is that I don’t need them at all. Oh I still use it to accumulate miles but as far as spending time in the application checking on what others are doing…I’m not doing that anymore.
And to be honest I cheered when ‘matched runs’ went away from the free level of Strava, it’s irritating to be preached at regarding whether you did better or worse on a run that’s was only 80% the same as past runs. I hate that sort of invasive preaching that happens with Strava where they have no idea what they’re doing…they are not a sports authority, they are a sports data accumulation application. And further, a matched run is not just 80% of other runs, it should be 95+ at the very least…which tells me these people do not know what they’re doing.
The nice thing is that I don’t really do much with Strava anymore. I do still upload my runs, but since I can’t access route builder (have to use matchmyrun / matchmyride instead) I just don’t really pay much attention to it. I still won’t delete my account because all my cycling KOM’s are still there and I intend to keep them for a while, but as for spending time in an app I can’t be bothered.
This is all a consequence of Strava attempting to coerce people into spending money on their product. It wasn’t about paying for new features, just now starting to pay for features that had been available before to everyone but now only to select people.
Strava is just not that big of a deal for me anymore, they’re doing a good job of making themselves irrelevant IMO.
Long story short, “They’re using the stick, instead of the carrot.”
I used Strava free for years. What’s annoying is I spent 10 minutes trying to find the leaderboard. And they killed the virtualpartner a couple of years ago. I would pay but $60 a year is way too much when Garmin connect has this for free and has improved the connect website. Goodbye Strava. Hello Garmin Connect.
Very helpful. I am trying in February 2021 to set up Strava to help me build a community of active users across three sports – cycling, running and walking – and it is now a real pain. Your article helped to explain why! Still hunting for better ways to do it and link to social media i.e. FB to make it fun.
I’m a Strava power user with 32 KOM’s and I’m happy with the free mode as I only need to see the top 10 to know what to beat
Since the announcement, I have used Wahoo’s Element to record and upload my rides (including to my free Strava account), that way I can at least view my own heart rate as it was recorded (which the free Strava account does not allow any more). Today I went rowing on a river, and thought I would use Strava to record the trip, since it does not seem that Wahoo is set up to deal with canoeing. After the trip when I wanted to view the trip, I unfortunately had to learn that Strava had suspended my account, and the data was not available (even though it was recorded locally on my device). Trying to log into the website, I was inform that my account was not authorized to access the platform. Inhad no communication from Strava that would indicate their plans to suspend my account, or the reason for it.
Based on this experience, I can only advise people not to trust Strava with your data at all. They provide and remove access whichever way they deem fit, it will be yor loss if you lose your training history.
Strava is so buggy and expensive for what it gives.
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