That seems like an unreal bad decision. Pretty much the only reason I, and many other people I know, use strava is for segments. No one who pays for trainingpeaks or a coach is going to pay for TP in addition to Strava. And then this kills the fun for a lot of people in my local cycling club for instance, who have been doing a Segment of the Week challenge. Sure, one person who pays can still see everything but it's way less fun to not immediately see your results and where you stack up. They've probably done the math and know that 10% more paying customers easily offsets 30% of their free customer base never using it again or something like that, but really disappointing to see.

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Benjamin Deal - Professional - Instagram - TriRig - Lodi Cyclery
Deals on Wheels - Results, schedule, videos, sponsors

That’s a bummer. I’m a paid subscriber and like the additional features - not sure if this will help Strava in the long term (or short term if they fold).

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Blog: http://262toboylstonstreet.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/NateThomasTri
Coaching: https://bybtricoaching.com/ - accepting athletes for 2023

Cue the free alternative to Strava in 3..2..1..

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@floathammerholdon | @partners_in_tri

Maybe I'm special, but I can still see the whole leaderboard on my KOMs and use the route builder. I also don't pay for Strava.

Have these changes not been made yet?

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Strava

Why can't they integrate ads? View an ad before viewing an area of the site or something. Banner ads. I dunno.

It's just "not enough" to be worth paying for. I love segments and route builder. But I use Google Earth to check them out anyway. Their training add on is just that, a little cheapo add on not worth much.

Ads for local businesses on the routes... that would be an awesome feature and I wouldn't be upset that it was an ad. hah.

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@floathammerholdon | @partners_in_tri

I can kind of understand the Route Builder, but not the leader boards. That's an easy "in" to get people to start using your service and they may eventually end up paying. I could see weather analysis, leader board predictions, etc. being a much more "premium" feature if they were to implement those. I could see charging for "basics" like leader boards if it was $1/month, but not the normal Summit membership fee.

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"Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps"
Blog = http://extrememomentum.com|Photos = http://wheelgoodphotos.com

So basically they are saying: "Hey free loaders! no more segments for you to use as an alternative to racing this race-less summer without paying us. I don't care if you lost your job, we need your money!"

Not sure this works out well for them.

I think I saw Garmin had some segment ability with their app, not that I paid much attention to it but can anyone tell me what would stop TrainingPeaks from adding a segment capability to their app? Aside from worker capacity.

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

I was wondering what the heck was going on...that sucks. Won't be buying premium anytime soon.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Garmin still has segments. The key to success is a broad user base who both create and ride segments. There is probably not much stopping anyone with GPS activity data from creating segments in their, but the value is driven by an active user base.

Why does Strava Continue to make decisions away from their core function? It is inherently a social network for endurance athletes. Not much more. So I join the sponsored challenges, is that not enough to keep segment leaderboards? Do we know how many users they're hemorrhaging? I can only surmise that people are quitting the platform as both non paying users and paying users if they're making this many cuts to what are "core features" of the platform.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Think even broader: They have a massive data set that could be sold to race directors that would benefit both races and racers:

Some use cases:
1) Advertise a race to all runners in a 30 minute drive
2) Last minute: advertise a marathon in 4 weeks to runners who are averaging more than 35mpw and don't have a race on their calendar
3) Wait, Strava doesn't have a race cal you say? Fix that, then add in suggested 'opening races' that sponsors could pay to be considered for.
4) Strava already tracks shoe data... Work with advertisers to create sponsored posts congratulating you on your 500mi, then offering 10% off a pair of shoes which is the updated version of the ones you've been using
5) Content marketing. They have what, 50m users, a huge number of which can't all be experts? Create fantastic free knowledge resources with affiliate links. Or, alternatively, send out free training plans at the appropriate times automatically ("Congrats on your first 5k! Here's how to get to 10k!") and include access to paid content (higher level training plans, group coaching sessions, etc) at the same time.
6) Really properly build out scheduling, planning, and analysis tools, and then leverage their community for accountability and social aspects. You just nailed ten planned workouts in a row? Congrats, Strava understood that and made a post about it; your friends can click on the post, see your progress over the last 8 weeks, and Kudos you for the 10 workouts.

And really, I'm just spitballing here. I'm not a sports marketer. It just really seems like Strava is taking the "lashings will continue until morale improves" approach, while not being apparently much different than they were for me in like... 2010? I pay much more than Strava costs for membership to things that actually give me tangible benefits, but I've just never been super clear on what Strava gets me. Live Segments on my Wahoo are neat, but I'm not paying $60 just for that. RideWithGPS already handles my mapping...

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JustinDoesTriathlon

Owner, FuelRodz Endurance.

There's a huge math disconnect with Strava on their fees versus potential.

If you only have X subscribers at $10/month but could have 100X subscribers at $1/month..........that's 10x the money coming in. That's an exaggeration, but you get my drift.

They need to make it a menu:
$1/mo for routebuilder, segments, basics
$5/mo for all that plus their super limited exercise tracking stuff

It makes it even more amazing to me that Zwift is only what it costs per month for what it is. It's apples to oranges, but damn.

According to some accounts "analyze" is also no longer free, and I will miss that: https://www.bikeradar.com/...routes-subscription/

"Free users will no longer be able to view full segment leaderboards, analyze efforts, create routes or view route recommendations."

To be fair the biking free version has been quite full featured for many years. They will get a lot more revenue from this move in the short term, but I suspect it will leave the door open to other free apps taking over.

They sort of tried that in 2018, but I think their pricing and packaging was still misaligned. They had three "packs" at $3/month each. Or, you could get everything for $8/month. Ultimately, the abandoned that and rolled back to a single product and priced it at $5/month.

I honestly wondered why it took them so long for them to paywall the segments. As fun as they are, it's one of the most (if only) unique features specific to Strava, in that they have robust and well utilized segments specific to their platform.

The rest of the reporting you can get on multiple other platforms (GPS, power metrics, analysis, etc.) which are totally free (like GoldenCheetah) so I was wondering why they weren't making people pay for this unique feature.

I don't rely on Strava, but I did enjoy checking up on how my ride segments compared with my prior self in prior years. That's literally the only thing I used it for.

I guess I'm not as up in arms about it as others are. It costs money for Strava to keep itself going. A boat load of free users are not necessarily going to support that. So you can either get people to pay for some of the more desirable parts of Strava (route builder and full access to all leaderboard info) or you can sell add space (i.e. slowtwitch or youtube) or you can be unscrupulous about how you sell data (i.e. Facebook). No matter which of the three Strava decided to chose people were going to bitch and moan about it because they want lots of neat stuff and they want it for free with no strings attached.

At $5 a month it's pretty damn cheap compared to everything else in our sport - not much more than the monthly subscription to slowtwitch. Yeah, I get things start to add up when you've got all kind of monthly fees from different services. So you just have to choose what you want. A new team kit each year vs every couple years. Tires which roll 3 watts faster than other cheaper tires tires. Gels for every ride instead of bananas. Netflix/Hulu vs watching free stuff on youtube with adds. Training peaks vs golden cheetah. Amazon prime vs just waiting an extra couple of days (or just not supporting an evil corporation). If you do one less 70.3 this coming year the race fee alone you could pay for 5-6 years of Strava.

I personally like live segments, it helps me push my efforts when I'm doing outside training. I’ve started using route builder more and more lately as it is a bit easier to use than google maps (just wish there was a way in it to tell if a segment was dirt or pavement). And I can probably save the money for it by not driving to work a few days a month or by eating out with my family 1-2 less a year.

As an aside, I would pay for a super premium membership that let me "fix" all the segments in the area I live. Too many duplicate segments with slightly different starting or ending points. Too many hill-climb segments that end after you start to descent on the other side. Too many segments that end just after a stop sign or light. And not every 100 feet of a bike path needs to have it's own segment. This all starts to litter the segment explorer and make it hard to find good or competitive segments.

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Matt

I'd pay if they fixed that. That's some BS you now have to pay for it but segment explorer is a cluster.

Also, sure hope on route builder they fixed that crap where for a bike ride it wants to randomly use all the stupid sidewalks and stuff and won't use other stuff that's legit. I'd hate to be paying and have the problems I've had with route builder.

How much 'fun' could it be if they're not willing to pay the equivalent of a cup of coffee per month?

For me, the rub is: it seems like they just don't offer that much tangible value, and are basically asking me to just finance their continued lack of innovation. The Strava forums have been rife with major and basic bugs that have gone unfixed for years. It's a running joke over there that it's nearly a waste of keystrokes to feature request.

Put another way: I happily pay something like $150 / year for TrainerRoad, I recently started somewhat happily paying for Zwift, and we all pay for other subscriptions at points in our lives. The thing is, I just don't know what Strava really offers me. The closest I've come to paying for it would be the Live Segments. I'd also consider paying for really good mapping but I haven't gotten their route exports to work on my Wahoo (I think that's a Wahoo thing, not a Strava thing to be fair.) I just don't feel compelled to toss $60 their way so that I can see that my friends did their daily run workout. I'm not going to just outright quit Strava because my data automatically pushes there anyway, so it's zero investment on my end, but I don't really feel like I'm getting that much in return. If they want to implement some features that I see will actually benefit me, I'll happily pay.
And lastly, maybe I'm just not in a high enough income bracket, but I've never understood the "It's only $XX!" argument. We all make value determinations. Anyone who thinks $60 is a throwaway amount can throw it my way, if you want.

EDIT: And actually, to clarify, I'm not even upset at Strava per se. They are a company and they need to earn money, perfectly fine. I think I have a more general frustration in that I want them to succeed, and it seems like they just keep missing the mark on how to find a sustainable business model. In a way, I almost want them to convince me to pay. I happily would, and a massively successful Strava benefits us all, in some small way, I bet. But you're right though Matt, I don't pay now and my life isn't really changing with this change, so it's not really a huge deal. I guess I just want to see them do a great job and I feel like this isn't it.

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JustinDoesTriathlon

Owner, FuelRodz Endurance.

I completely agree with the approach. This is how the other 'surveillance capitalism' companies build their businesses. Data can be sold.

But it only works if you have scale, unfortunately. Race directors and races are pocket change comparing with markets like clothing, cosmetics, alcohol available for Facebook/Google.

Also, workout data is not something that really can be monetized. Facebook/Google are collecting so much personal data from various sources, that they're capable not only to predict emotions, but even steer people towards desired outcomes. For example guess that you're depressed and show you more bourbon ads. Imagine conversion on this one!

What can Strava offer that's similar? The future is bleak, I'm afraid.

Same. I just checked everything and it works.

I don't pay anything.

Strava's always been peculiar to me - The paid-for features aren't worth any money at all. The free features were always worth money. However, given the world, there's no way I'm going to start paying any time soon - I'll just do without. It's not going to be a fast year anyway, so not many PB*s for me.

As far as core functionality, though. They're a business... Their primary core function is to make money. Everything else is way down the priority list. I'm not surprised it got to this if they're not making money.

And finally, if they see themselves as a social network for athletes, they've got a long way to go before I'll take them seriously as that. Can I DM my connections?

Cheers!

PB is Canadian-speak for PR.

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Munq

Or you can be scrupulous about how you sell data. Facebook would probably still be profitable without their privacy "mishaps."

Everything still works for me and I just looked at a leaderboard for a segment and its held by an old co-worker who rides and e-bike. Pretty funny.

The only thing I care about is seeing what cool rides my friends did. Keeping tabs on people. Oh, you did that race, how did it go, etc? That's still free, apparently, so I'm good.

I cared about segments for a while, KOMs, PRs, etc. But I pay zero attention to those now. I remember 4-5 years ago amongst my roadie community there was a lot of "segment talk," who has the KOM for that climb...where's the finish line for that segment, etc. That seems to be gone. No one talks about that stuff anymore (at least in my perception).

I don't think you read the article. Segments are not behind a paywall, what is behind the paywall is segment rankings outside of the top 10. So you can still see the segments and the KOM, and the top 10, but you can't see anyones rankings (including your own) who are below the top 10 without paying. Seems quite reasonable, there is no "public interest" in knowing who is 1247th place on a segment; if somebody wants to know this obscure information it seems completely reasonable that they should pay.

Why should Strava be concerned about "customers" who don't pay for their service?

As a paying member, I have no opinion on this decision, because I had decided what they were already offering was worth it to me (I gain or lose nothing). So I don't think this decision will cause them to lose any paying customers, and even if it gains 10-20% of people who weren't paying to now join, it was a great business decision.

Strava has been losing money for close to a decade. So it's pretty obvious, having a hugely successful, mostly free service is not a good business. So it is pretty unlikely you are going to see a "free alternative" that offers anything near what Strava did, because nobody will be willing to fund it. Because although Strava was "free" for you, somebody has been paying to keep them in business for the past 10 years.

Apologies for teaching to suck eggs, but you can 'fix' that now using the 'hide segment'. And it's pretty clever, where if several people manually hide a segment then it autohides for everyone, unless you manually go into the 'hidden segments' list and add it back. Although I fully accept this in part may also be geography dependent, and in major cities then I can imagine the number of users is so high on any given path that the 2% of numpties that make crap segments becomes a massive amount of junk.

Because subscriptions are only part of the revenue stream. The other part of the revenue stream is getting eyeballs on and participation in sponsored challenges, and other sponsored things. The more people who sign up for the Rapha Rising challenge or whatever, the higher the rate Strava can demand from sponsors like Rapha. If people start drifting off into Garmin Connect, Trainerroad, Endomondo, etc, it's a problem.

I think in Strava's perfect world they'd be free for the end-user and would just get big checks from all the equipment manufacturers to get access to the Strava user base.

But that perfect world doesn't seem to be working out.

But Strava can't just cater only to the paying subscribers. They need to keep everyone coming back.

How about on the phone app? I don't notice any difference on the desktop but the phone app seems a little crippled. I don't normally look at my rides on the phone so can't tell if it's changed.

The core feature of their platform, is how they monetize it. You were using it, so you consider it has value, but yet you weren't willing to give them any money (definition of a freeloader). Now you sound butthurt, like they owed you or anyone else something. You might consider being grateful about what they provided to you and millions of others for years, while asking for nothing in exchange. They didn't take anything away from you, just after years of getting nothing out of the relationship with you they stopped giving.

What services are you willing to provide to millions of people for free?

I did, actually. I chose a short topic title that captured most of the effect of the change. You're angling towards the leaderboard, but perhaps more importantly in a general sense is that segment analysis is also affected. Want to see your effort for that climb segment? Power over the course of that TT lap? Pay.

I dunno, subscriptions is how Costco makes about 95% of their profits. And companies are still competing to get into their stores. It seems pretty obvious they wouldn't be doing this if their ad revenue was anywhere near sufficient to make the margins their investors expected. Likewise, customers who actually pay for Strava are probably more valuable for the advertisers, because we aren't freeloading cheapskates who are afraid to spend our money;)

I am puzzled about why people are getting so butthurt because somebody stopped giving them something for free. At least me, and most of the people I interact with on Strava all have had the premium service for years. I think it has a not of nice features and I felt good about chipping in to help make this work for everyone. Apparently my donations weren't enough;)

This isn't true. Strava collects and monetizes data uploaded by all users. For example, they sell runner and bike usage stats to city planners, etc. It's similar to Facebook. Strava also sells access to user eyeballs to manufacturers. No end user pays for Facebook, yet users aren't freeloading. Just the opposite. Their data is monetized.

Strava just hasn't figured out a way to monetize that gives the necessary ROI to keep their business growing. (and pay off the venture capital money funnel).

Why do you think that should be free? You should start a free service to provide that, I hear there is an underserved market;)

Just because it's kind of a bait and switch. When you had something for "free" and then it's taken away with no warning, you feel like you've lost something.

I'm not butthurt, though. As I wrote above, segment information has no value to me, so I didn't lose anything.

You must be new to the idea of Data being currency. I, and millions of users worldwide are paying for the service of strava which they have monetized with ads [challenges]. So I have already paid them. What they're now doing is giving customers very little in return for the amount of data we're giving them.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

No, you are just over-estimating the value of the data. We are starting to see an inflection point in businesses whose primary asset is user data. Some of this data is extremely valuable and has allowed these companies (like FB and Amazon) to make huge profits. However, a lot of this data has minimal value (but it is still expensive to extract and maintain). You are portraying this as Strava doesn't know what it's doing, where I think they finally had a come to Jesus moment about what the prospects are for growing the monetization of the data, the growth isn't there and they need to increase the subscription revenue to have a functioning business.

There is a lot of self-importance among triathletes and cyclists that might drive them to think that data about what they are doing is highly valuable, but that fact is the only people who ascribe high value to this data are the athletes themselves, so it is perfectly natural to target this group to get revenue from as opposed to look for third parties (like city planners). Who do you think has more money, road and triathlon cyclists or city planners?

I didn't assert what it should be, just wanted to highlight something that was buried a bit deeper in the article. That's the way it is now following these updates. It's something I'm willing to pay for (and will continue to pay for), but generally premium subscriptions are built out of new feature development, not by restricting existing free features--especially one that is so core to the platform's identity. In my experience Strava's uniquely positioned as a social focal point of otherwise disparate activity/device ecosystems. Instead of continuing to build on that advantage and reinforce that single-stop identity by adding in features present on other platforms--or even just their own community's backlog of requests--they've had to resort to this.

I totally get it from a business standpoint--if you're in a place where you have to make a significant positive impact to your bottom line, this is perhaps the simplest, most immediate way of doing it. I just wish that it hadn't come to this. They could have easily focused on improving the feature set of their platform over the past few years instead of being complacent.

I'm a data scientist. You have an unrealistic estimation of how important you (and information about your sports habits) are and how much anyone wants to pay for it. It's true, data is currency, but in data (like real currency) there are US dollars and Zimbabwe dollars, your cycling information is valued in Zimbabwe dollars;)

And you have to admit there is a certain irony, you are claiming that Strava data is valuable, but when asked to pay for it (because the premium package just gives you access to more data), you have a problem. You can't have it both ways.

Strava has always been an analytics service. All that has happened is they stopped offering as much free analytics. Unlike many businesses who collect a lot of user data, Strava actually shared almost all of it, mostly completely publicly (free).

Agreed on this- there is a lot of segment cluster-F for sure. Also a reason to not have "live" segments on your garmin or whatever- the thing beeps continuously then.

Yeah, for example when I lived and ran in downtown Portland. It’s dumb the amount segments and duplicate segments there are. Hiding segments doesn’t fix the underlying issue. In addition to what you mention above, the other issue is some people may hide version A of a segment, some hide version B and some version C. So none fall below the threshold and all are shown. Not a deal breaker or anything, just annoying

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Matt

+1.

And the 'selling of data to city planners' part is for once where a discussion comes into my dayjob. You are right that strava is selling this. And many are buying the data, or at least using it for some purposes. But, and again, this is my dayjob, it's poor quality data that is biased (as in doesn't reflect the population equally) and of a relatively low resolution (by the time I get my mitts on it) compared to other sources I have for that data. And so bizarrely I'm much happier to pay strava $60 a year for my data than I am to approve / suggest a client of mine pays strava for a city/years worth of data. There are many people playing in this data space, mobile phones (ie the service providers using the data from cell towers to locate people), google of course, TomTom Sat Nav, etc etc. All can give me information about how and where people are moving from a very large database. All have limitations/ advantages. Strava has the greatest certainty on mode. TomTom data best for travel time. Mobile phone is best for 'volume/number' of people and understanding journey purpose.

But none as of yet compete with the more established methods we've been using since the 1960s which are more labour intensive. Sadly the availability of these new sources has in part been hampered by the sellers claiming that they can replicate the data from traditional methods cheaper. This isn't the case most of the time. What they are only just starting to do is to identify the uses of the data we've never tried to do before as it would be impossible. So up to now they have generally been solutions (not) looking for a problem to solve. Which has meant they've been racign to the bottom in terms of the price, but then I've ended up being lumbered with data that has needed significant manipulation/cleaning in order to make it vaguely fit for purpose, and so all up the clients have been sold a dream and ended up with a nightmare.

q

Or the alternative take...
'Hey freeloaders... there's 4 times as many of you now than 6 months ago our computing infrastructure costs a lot, more of it costs more still, and advertising income around the world has crashed. You can't keep dining for free'

Being a data scientist and understanding how one might effectively and profitably monetize a data set are not the same thing...

I am a paying member already and I am distressed by this news. I use Strava mainly as a social network - a way to see what my friends and/or competitors are doing. I am often interested in comparing my segment performances to others'.

If a many of these users stop using Strava because of this move, I'm going to stop using Strava too.

I could care less about detailed analytics of my own ride. I use TP for that.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

I think Nike has been relatively successful as weathering this pandemic partly by monetizing the workout data collected through its running & training apps. I am sure they and other sports product companies would love to have Strava's data.

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

idk man, I think the added challenge is having to run the tilikum-steel waterfront loop two times as fast as you can in order to get the 5,000 segments from each different starting point. And then do it all backwards for the other 3,000 segments in reverse.

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

For me there has never been any value in premium. I have done the premium trials and found I didn't use the extra features. All I really do on Strava is check out what friends have been up to and give a few kudos.
For analysis, I have been using FinalSurge for some time now. It is free and gives me all of the data I need.
Segments are interesting and I check them out from time to time but most of the koms around here were set during cyclonic winds and/or bunch rides. I can't get anywhere near the top so I won't really miss that functionality.
Noe that I can't even compare a segment time with a friend's time I think I will just remove my account. I don't see any reason to keep supplying Strava with data to get nothing in return.

For any social network, the value is in scale....and that's really hard to build if you are limited to just paying subscribers (which is why every social network has a fairly robust free offering, and might have a premium offering that appeals to a small number of users). Strava has the leadership position, and other offerings are either too niche or only really work for a particular device (Garmin) or type of user (cyclist).

Ideally they could get enough revenue through ads/sponsorships, but it doesn't look like they are even close (tough when a senior dev in SOMA costs $300+/yr). They have always been primarily and acquisition play, but the VCs may not be interested in continued investment toward that outcome.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

I agree with you. I pay for Strava because I like the extra features. But if this move causes ~1/3rd of people to quit strava, I won't be a paying member for much longer, because it will be way less fun.

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

So you think the value of the Harvard alumni network is based on scale? I would argue it is based primarily on exclusivity, scale is a secondary factor.

Likewise, in a network, the value of all nodes/edges is not equal, it is entirely possible a network analysis of strava shows that non-paying nodes are not nearly as valuable for what strava's business strategy is.

Strava is a directed network(I have much greater number of people who follow me, than I follow), which is very different from facebook (undirected network, all friendships are reciprocal).

I agree that scale is one aspect of how you can analyze a network. However, if you are familiar with formal network analysis, there are many factors other than "scale" that may be used to analyze networks.

Being a data scientist and understanding how one might effectively and profitably monetize a data set are not the same thing...[/quote]
Actually, they are the same thing. You don't think they shovel money at data scientists for no reason, do you?

The Harvard Alumni Network is not a social network (an end user product). You apparently have missed the boat on this one, you're arguing one way. I can tell you that data and the packages around the data are very powerful, especially from a Sponsor standpoint.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Strava's email to users, they titled it-"We're Betting on Our Athletes"


Their "athletes" aka comsumers, aren't betting on them though.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I just updated my workouts in the Big Kahuna Challenge and it didn't look like it moved. Will our workouts still transfer over to Slowtwitch from Strava?

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http://www.sfuelsgolonger.com

I don’t mind paying since it is the only social media crap I do. I do like the age group look ups and a few other things. It probably helps motivate friends you ride with when you recognize their riding or help get them out the door (now that we can ride outside) when they need a kick.

Besides, I just cancelled cable as they priced themselves out of my tolerances, especially with no live sports. Why would you raise rates for cable when you don’t have live sports?

I don’t think it cost too much to join Strava and there are other ways to cut cost if I need to. I can stop going out to eat, (oh wait that happened already) or taking fun trips (oh crap again). Maybe the Strava guys figured its all old guy losers like me have going so we will pay up?

RIDE ON KUDOS to all! Now back to the plague.

Rob

free customers aren't customers. That answers all of your questions about this. I don't know why its even confusing to anyone or controversial. They are the only shop in town for what they specialize in, no one else is even close. So yes, they are going to sell that specialty and they could charge a lot more if they wanted to.

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Professional Athlete: http://jordancheyne.wordpress.com/ http://www.strava.com/athletes/145340

Coaching Services:http://www.peakformcoaching.com/

There are plenty of Strava users who patch tubes 2-3 times to save money...not necessarily because they can't afford a new one, but in principle. Just ask them how many miles their well worn tires have on their Enves.

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"Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps"
Blog = http://extrememomentum.com|Photos = http://wheelgoodphotos.com

not a direct reply....
in regards to not showing full leaderboards to free accounts, they are really shooting themselves in the foot here. i always felt the "hook" to get a casual user engaged was getting those competitive juices flowing, whether it was against PR's, friends, local pro's , the best in the world etc. Now new users won't get that experience, and if they don't, what sets strava apart from other fitness trackers or routing apps etc? other big downside, by not being able to see leaderboards you are really limited when viewing other peoples' activities (stalking basically) or finding new people to follow. i can think of plenty of people i follow that i don't know personally, but they ride nearby and they ride inspiring routes, or trails i didn't even know were ridable. i don't know how i would find these people without perusing through leaderboards and looking through rides etc.

How could it take 180 people to run Strava? (Especially since small changes and updates seem to take so long) It seems like they got too excited and built a little empire they can't afford.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

I was referring to online social networking companies (FB, LinkedIn, etc.). The Harvard alumni network is a totally different beast. They get some of their value extraction upfront (tuition) and a lot in arrears from rich donors (which they are really good at).

IIRC, facebook started as a service exclusive to Harvard students....then included other elite colleges.....then any college.....then anyone with a school email......then everyone. There was no way they were going to be worth billions just catering to Harvard alum, so they needed to scale to make their data/ad network profitable.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

I agree. The leaderboards are the only thing that interest me about Strava. I have all other info for free in other ways.

I am assuming fewer people will now use the app since many (myself included) can't see paying for an app that isn't really a training or coaching app, and isn't a social media (all of which are free anyway). As users decline, the app will be increasingly less interesting to people (since the only thing people really cared about is the leaderboards). As fewer people use the app, it will become a downward cycle or people losing interest.

I sort of wish them well, but I also think they have misread their value. I will miss it (but not enough to pay).

I agree also. I give kudos and occasionally leave a comment or two for the people that I follow, but the only things that are important for me are the KOMs, Top 10s, and my PRs. Now that I am getting to the age that grabbing those KOMs or Top 10s is getting harder and harder, I have less and less of a reason to pay for the subscription because I don't use any of those things a subscription pays for. If they want me to pay for it, and let's be honest it doesn't really cost that much, then they are going to have to include something that is useful to me, which is something that I yet don't know I want.

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The more people I encounter the more I love my cats.

I'm with you and don't understand the how economics of Strava. It seems like they have a structural problem with there business that needs to be addressed before trying to re-invent the subscription game again and again. With 180 employees I can only guess most of those employees are helping with 3rd party developers and then this is where I would be looking to cash in. I have collect data on devices from Lenzye, Garmin and Tacx/Zwift and all these companies have leveraged Strava rather than sort out functional software. By charging the companies for whom you are developing the software it becomes much easier to work out market pricing and employee load. In effect you hire the number of people you have work to support.

If this not the work most of the 180 employees are doing then lord knows what they are doing. I had a quick google of Training Peaks and from what I see they are between 11-50 employee. I realize they have membership numbers on a different scale but I can't see why Strava is doing that requires so many people that Training Peaks isn't unless its working directly with the 3rd party app companies.

Interesting point. As a follow up question how can not one of those 180 people have ever said ... hey how can we run this company if we never charge or run ads? I'm being a bit of a smartass but also how can not one of those folks be public relations or business strategy? In this announcement they basically said ... hello competitors and third-party folks you have 60 days to develop a product to replace us. I find the whole thing wildly entertaining.

I think there's a mistunderstanding that if you're not paying it's for free.

As a user, we give them a huge amount of valuable information which is sold to many companies in the industry. We might not be paying with currency but we are paying, just with another commodity.

I'm with you, though, I'm not really bothered. I don't really look at segments or anything. I stopped my Summit membership because these days I use Golden Cheetah. It does everything any of the other platforms do.

On the one hand, I understand that Strava has to make money, and can see how they came to a decision to finally try to extract some revenue out of their most popular feature (Segments). On the other hand, the value of Segments is proportional to the number of users. If this decision drives away casual (free) users in large numbers, the value proposition of the feature for remaining subscribers is diminished. It's the "Strava Dilema." Other platforms have their equivalents to Segments, but Strava has owned the public mindshare due to their density of participants. Strava knows taking Segments data behind a paywall is risky; It's why they've spent the last 4-5 years trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to build a premium membership feature set without touching Segments. Desperation has brought them to this point.

I'm not mad; I don't think Strava owes me anything*. But when I look at all the proposed changes, it pushes me one step closer to making a decision of whether to subscribe or to quit using it all together. If I leave, it won't be an emotional decision. Rationally, I see that most of what Strava wants me to start paying for for, other than Segment comparisons to other riders, I can get without a subscription from Garmin Connect. Right now, Strava is where I go after a ride to see my stats and maybe dig into the data a little. While I'm there, I'll take a glance at the feed and throw a few Kudos to friends. With these changes, my first, and maybe only, stop will be to Garmin Connect. The primary value of Segments for me has morphed from "comparing myself to others" to "comparing my most recent performance to previous performances." I can replicate my favorite segments on GC, and continue to do that. While I occasionally like to see where I rank, and where I stand versus a handful of friends, I'm personally not inclined to pay Strava $60 a year to continue seeing it.

Strava is walking a bit of a tightrope, here. I think they're banking largely on apathy; that, in the end, no matter how much people bitch, few will actually quit. It's probably a good bet. But if they're wrong, and people start bailing out, the exodus starts to feed on itself. It's going to be an interesting few months to watch.


*If they do put the workout log behind the paywall, I feel they should allow users a reasonable opportunity to port their history elsewhere without cost. I have used Strava as my "master fitness log" for the last ~3 years and have a lot of manually entered swims and treadmill runs there and nowhere else.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

So are there any other players at the table? Does Garmin count?

Easier said than done.

Same here.....
And Strava has still never addressed other sports in its segments...Not sure where the value will lie.

Anyone use the live tracking feature on Strava; that seems to be included when you pay.

Stephen J

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I believe my local reality has been violated.
____________________________________________
Happiness = Results / (Expectations)^2

Kinda like Zwift, you don't have to use it. I use Strava because SportsTracks refuses to sync with Zwift (I've asked SportsTracks and get some run around that Zwift won't let them) thats fine for the same yearly price I'll stay with Strava and won't renew SportsTracks (it is a good program, no complaints). I really don't care about the "hey look at my workout" aspect of Strava no do I care what Joe Blow did on his training ride or run. Strava app is convenient, SportTracks doesn't have an app.

And not only that, most of those are getting paid San Francisco salaries in a huge San Francisco office that must cost a bloody fortune. Plus a second office in Denver. They're acting like they're Facebook before they've shown any evidence that they actually can scale big enough to support that kind of employee base or without understanding what business model will get them that kind of profitability. It won't take them long to blow through their $40 million in vc money like that.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

 
Most of us will end up paying since we are captive users. The problem I see is that newcomers won't see the appeal of their services and therefore fewer and fewer will use strava. As soon as the leaderboards don't really show your overall performance among people going through that segment (as it has been up to now), they become obsolete.

Strava is doing what Whatsapp tried to do... with Whatsapp backing off. Strava is charging for what's been free till now. And their problem is that for the last few years they have neglected the core of the network: leaderboards and rankings. Why would someone pay to see a leaderboard topped by guys riding in a professional race, or disregarding wind effect (as Garmin Connect does) or comparing team time trials to solo efforts? I live in an area visited every year by La Vuelta... and I have lost some modest uphill KOMs at 22-26 mph to professional guys riding behind a car at 38 mph (seen with my own eyes).

I had been a paying member but quit paying last year because I am so annoyed at their training log features ignoring all workouts except SBR, which left me without XC Skiing, strength, etc. I think its been known that they are losing money but I am still taken aback on the lack of development of their platform over the past 5 years.

What really bums me out is that my 18 and 21 YO daughters are going to have to pay now too. My 21 year old is leaderboard and QOM on a lot of MTB climbs and my 18 YO daughter is QOM on the downhill MTB segments. They are really getting into it with their peer group due to segments and its going to take some wind from their sails. I guess I need to be a nice Dad and pay $180 for family memberships, which sucks. They should give junior riders and college kids a break by age.

I'm not so sure. Apple, Garmin and even Training Peaks could move into the market pretty quickly. I suspect the reason they haven't done it is because it would have been a bad business move. Strava has been burning through cash at an unsustainable rate and it would have been stupid to get money wasting race with them. Economically you can't win against a company who is willing to operate in an unprofitable manner year after year after year.

It looks like the reality has finally started to hit home with Strava. Assuming Strava starts having to play by basic market rules it becomes viable to compete with them. In effect they have lost their ability to just outspend everyone else and that opens the door to true innovation and competition. I struggle to believe the core of what Strava does is inherently unprofitable without directly charging the end user. Part of the problem seems to be Strava has way to many employees for what they actually do and that makes profitability a massive challenge.

Free customers are fantastic resources though. They can supply a crap tonne of data which can be monetized downstream. For far more than piddly little subscription fees may bring in. Just ask Google, Facebook, Instagram etc....

I've always thought RideWithGPS was underrated.

Yeah, I don't think they took anything away from me as a free customer that I actually use. If they took away leader boards completely then I'd have a problem, but being able to see top 10 is kinda all I need (for what I'm interested in segments anyways). I guess if I went and climbed Mt Lemmon or something I'd like to see where I stacked up against my friends, but that's an odd circumstance, for me anyways.

Alright, ignoring any stuff about ad revenue issues, too much staff, or talk of us being freeloaders wanting something free that cost us a coffee.................................how about the fact some of the stuff they want us to pay for now still DOESN'T WORK RIGHT.

-Route builder still is kind of buggy. It wants to randomly select sidewalks and random other map features. It is a clusterfuck of segments that never show up depending on how you're zoomed in or out. It cannot let you edit a route that you create from an activity, very well at least.

-The leaderboards system needs a total revamp. It needs "group" sections and individual. Predictions would be nice. Create a concept of a "your kingdom" concept showing a map of your results. I'd pay for that. Way it is now with self policing and some of the issues with it.......nah. I'll go to keeping track of it myself.

-The training stuff is a total afterthought versus like TP or Trainerroad et al. It should be a la carte to add this and drive the price down for the other stuff.

It's a great place, but they have to really polish it up for what it is.

Wait, how many people use Strava as compared to, say, Facebook?

I *highly* recommend anyone proposing all these half-baked business model alternatives listen to the From The Top podcast with the Strava founders.
https://cyclingtips.com/...-podcast-transcript/
To say they misunderstand their own product's core features is woefully inaccurate.

And for the complainers, if you don't like the changes, you should just ask for your money back.

Me too. When I first started, and didn't have a cycling computer, I found their app much better than Strava's. Route Planning is better, too. It just never quite gained the critical mass of participants that Strava did.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

You're right, that was poorly worded on my part, and it wasn't fair of me to describe it that way. They have been making significant progress recently in other areas, which is very welcomed in comparison to the past stagnant period under prior leadership. I understand everything can't just be free forever, but while this might be the best and most logical solution for their current position, it really feels like better planning up to this point could have made this more avoidable.

I don't have much insight into the company's internals, but if my own experience in technology is at all relevant, you can have all the right people and be making great short term decisions--that's not too hard-- but successfully planning and executing the longer-term big-picture stuff is where it really gets tricky, and if things don't pan out for whatever reason, you get less-than-ideal situations like this.

I'm happy someone is making these big decisions though (in addition to spurring on all the recent development addressing longstanding feature requests). I'd certainly rather pay for this than not have the platform at all.

THIS. My local segments are full of car rides and bikes on run segments. The Singapore Marina segment situation is basically useless; probably half of the KOMs are not legitimate. I'm not a software engineer, but it seems like it shouldn't be too hard to put a hard stop on any segment efforts that are faster than world record pace.

I'd probably pay $60/yr for segments if it seemed like they spent any effort at all on them. And segments is all I'd be paying for that I don't get from TrainingPeaks.

 
i wonder if they anticipate e-bikes diminishing the informational value of leaderboards?

maybe they'll bring back the annual koms and have more yearly segmentation?

or maybe there's some signatures in the gps tracks from an ebike that could be detected with enough data?

Which is why I recommend that podcast. By coincidence I just listened to it last week and it changed my view of the company, the way it's done things in the past, and how it's recognized past mis-steps and is moving towards a well thought out product.

For only $5 a month this is a pretty nice app to have. Sure Strava might lose come users but I'm not exactly the type to complain about losing something I was getting for free...

$4000+ bike, $200 + wetsuit, Race wheels, GPS watch, Race fees but complain about $5 a month plus the segment leader boards are about as accurate as Zwift race results.

That's how I got into Strava, wasn't a big fan of it a few years ago as I was worried about it being a bad influence to easy sessions (i.e. chasing segments, KOMSs, etc.) I finally gave in to temptation climbing a volcano in Central America, as the guide (local trail runner) encouraged me to try a climbing segment for the final steep section at over 3500 m above sea level, I painfully missed the KOM by like 5 seconds over 17 minutes, and have been letting it ruin some of my training sessions every since.

I don't see much value to being a paid subscriber and the strong-arm strategy to give us access again to this feature, is a bit annoying, so I might just cancel my account.

They do sell big swaths of data to government agencies though, so I don't think the subscription services are necessarily what really fuels them. People give them tons of data and they turn around and sell it. I obviously don't know their financial infrastructure, but I think the data side makes them a fair amount of money.

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Team Zoot 2023

It's not a justification, but an explanation of the phenomenon............people are used to getting some super slick apps for free with just ads.

Pandora? Freaking free after listening to a couple ads per hour just like the radio? Yeah. Why do we think this mentality exists? It's easy to understand the why.

Also, not all Strava users are on $5000 bikes. Plenty of folks out there on 10 year old stuff at low cost. $5/mo isn't that much at all, but you better cross your "t" and dot your "i" once you start demanding all users use anything useful pay a monthly fee. I would say they still aren't at that level despite years and years now of existing.

So, to me, Strava isn't good at convincing customers to pay up. In this case, pulling off the bandaid probably wasn't the best move. I'd say they should have cleaned it all up and added some features first.

I agree about the 'reasonable opportunity' request, but that is not the way Strava has behaved. If reports are to be believed (I'm not a developer / interact with Strava other than a user), Strava made these changes and announced that they were done without any advance warning to most developers/3rd party users of the API. You might recall that that is exactly what Strava did some time ago with Relive - just broke the portion of the API they use during breakfast one morning. Surprise! And that's my real issue with Strava - they don't seem to play fair. Why does this matter? If they are willing to break with partners without advance warning, they are likely willing to break with YOU without advance warning. Are you waiting for the morning you wake up and Strava says - all you freeloading free users can no longer access your data as of this moment. Bye. So much for the hope of 'reasonable opportunity'.

Strava would have failed to exist during their first year without the data uploaded by free users. In fact, their entire original business plan *required* free users, because starting off with paying users would have resulted in so few users that the entire operation would fail to be compelling. Now, should Strava have a money-making strategy? Of course. But what is wrong with...we're making changes to ensure that we can continue to bring our community social and data services...and in 30 days, here's what will happen... Even if this info was just sent to developers/3rd party API users, my opinion on the 'evilness' of Strava would be very different. Long story short? They have demonstrated a willingness to screw the folks who help make them popular with little to no warning - I am confident that they are willing to do the same to you.

EDIT to fix spellcheck typo

Well, apparently the update hasn't rolled over to the desktop browser app, yet. I was able to download my history today without issue. Not sure what the process will be like tomorrow our Thursday when the roll out is complete.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

Moto drafting violates Strava policy. You can flag that.

quite right..

except a quibble, very little of the data is valuable..

Amazon didn't make a profit for most of its life, and has only recently pulled into the black, due mostly to its software business AWS which underpins everything else on the internet - Strava, Netflix, etc etc etc. On the internet you can live without Amazon but not without AWS..
https://gizmodo.com/...mpossible-1830565336

FB makes money from advertising, not from selling data. It does use your data to target ads at you, but that's not quite the same.
https://www.thestreet.com/...-make-money-14754098

So no surprise Strava can't make money selling data..
As you say I would not expect any free replacement to start up, as the supply of greater fools dwindles..

agreed 100%. the segment search is hilariously bad.

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

Er, that's a bit of an overstatement. They're dominant at near 50% of "cloud" market share. But that sure isn't "everything else."

That seems to corroborate my perception they're a bit lost on where to go from here. :)

Been covered a couple of times already, but not sure if you read those posts. They have given / sold large amounts of data to quite a few cities. However, the $ they get for this is absolutely peanuts compared to what you may think they get for that data. Even if they did sell data to 500 cities a year for US10,000 a time that's 5 million [editted] revenue per year which doesn't cover the cost of selling that data - (think about it they need to have legal and financial arrangements specific to every country they do work in, and as these are public sector clients then there is minimal flexibility on behalf of the customers). And whilst some on here may consider that cycle data is an essential part of planning / running a city, 98% of ratepayers don't - they think cyclists should be funding infrastructure from bike permits/tax not car drivers.

It may be that the three stages of their business plan were 1) build users and VC like facebook 2) sell data / advertising (data wasn't really as valuable as they hoped, everyone spat the dummy at the way they added advertising or 'promoted content'), so now they are suggesting people that use their service pay for it.Having demonstrated that there was a percentage of people that have been paying for essentially negligible reason / benefit for the last 8 years, then faced with the option now to not use the main core feature of the service a proportion of people will now pay what is a relatively small cost, a larger proportion will just miss out on the feature and carry on auto-uploading, and a proportion will disconnect. But that still increases revenue. In some ways the cost they are charging is an awkward one. It's a charge which means that people are upset at something that was free no longer is. They would feel that way if the cost was $1, $5 or $50 a month, it's simply because it's a cost. However, the 5 means they need a lot of people to pay, you can't count on a small number of core users funding it for everyone. And the reality is that the 'principled objectors' are the most vocal. People that are "meh, I got 8 years free as an introductory offer, now it's the cost of a coffee a fortnight" are a lot less likely to post on social media than the "How dare they charge me for looking after my data for me" group.

I know I always judge my subscription costs in coffees/fortnight....

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Check your math

Please tell me what Strava does better than Garmin or Polar's native software.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

LOL. Indeed. I knew it was wrong. i blame the 4:40am zwift.... Point stands though, $5m is still nowhere near the revenue to support what they do when you include the cost of selling that broadly.

DC Rainmaker says that Strava says that the changes will roll out to end users over the next couple of days...

Lets me fake brag to my clubbies. Lets me seamlessly post photos of my ride. See data from all the group, regardless of their device. See exactly where on a long climb I'm gaining / losing time compared to others. On a weekly basis then lets me see how my times compare on the key group ride climbs with those in the other groups (we split up to keep numbers safe, have several 'free ride' segments and always interesting to see how much difference between the people in other groups. So for me the #1 difference is the segments. I don't use Strava for any other training reasons, that's Training Peaks and sometimes WKO4. Garmin, errm. Umm. That's simply a place that is a passing point to get data into TP and Strava. TP for serious, Strava for fun.

These changes have been rolled out for a couple weeks it feels like.


I don't use it for any of these group ride things, probably because I train solo. I do agree when it comes to races and you see the other people that ran it.

Garmin has segments and it also has similar features to what you just described. It's just not what Garmin build their platform on. My point is that people aren't on strava for data analysis.

The one kind of cool feature that I like, that I'm sure could be an easy roll out from Garmin is the matched runs feature when you look at your data from a specific training session.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I recognize there is a revenue stream through the data but obviously Strava is tired of rowing that boat hoping for an eventual pay out. All of your above mentioned companies make huge money from ads and that just hasn't happened for Strava either by strategy or by lack of upside. At some point you have to make money and that time is now for Strava. And even if they do lose 30% of total users which I very much doubt there is still plenty of data to go around.

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Professional Athlete: http://jordancheyne.wordpress.com/ http://www.strava.com/athletes/145340

Coaching Services:http://www.peakformcoaching.com/

It takes a lot of people to ignore bugs and feature requests for years, and then announce that an option for a chronological feed is an enhancement, after previously changing from chronological order.

IMO at least, I am reluctant to spend for Strava not because the product doesn't have value (although I think they overcharge for it - at 1$ to 3$ per month it'd be nobrainer), but because I think that management doesn't listen to consumers in the least. That is a turn off.

It's pretty annoying though when you have to do that in the first place...especially from "Professional" members, who should know enough to not just upload them as regular rides...and then when called on it, say "Yeah, it was motorpaced...flag it if it bothers you". Totally tone deaf. (True story about a pro who trains locally often)

Same thing with e-bikes. There's a separate category for that, yet somehow users don't understand that it's even possible to set the activity up properly :-/

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

// the pay wall helps to remember that a certain speed on a real road takes place in a special situation at a certain time .. to be compared in that special situation .. [that comparison can't be "bought by better conditions“]

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*
___/\___/\___/\___ the s u r f b o a r d of the K u r p f a l z is the r o a d b i k e .. oSo >>

Nothing in life is free, other than air.

If you want the features, go pay. And when you pay, you can complain about what is missing.

Been saying that for 2 days already. Seems Strava management doesn’t have their mission clear. Or have the wrong mission

wish they had thought outside the box a little before this. we did a virtual club race using strava this april because all other racing was cancelled. we had 4 local segments chosen. Road, MTB , gravel, and enduro. you could use any bike you wanted, on any day within roughly a week. then final leaderboard positions were translated to points system and a winner decided. 100 people in the club, probably 25 did all 4 segments. i would gladly pay a couple of $ for something like this. obviously at a small level, everyone knew everyone else and cheating was not an issue.
so why not create a virtual race or event portion of the app with a small entry fee, and polish up the features to make a private leaderboard with just race entrants. they could have cleaned up the last 2 months......

Strava is great. I adds a dimension missings when racing is sparse. Expanded features begin to challenge the data value from training peaks. Its also the best log of activities i have known for the last decade. Where else can you easily pull up the same run and see all your efforts over the past years. Its monthly charge is nominal. I have always seen the charge as a good faith contribution to a website which provides a great platform. Almost like Kahn Academy. How many of you use this for your kids and dont contribute to it financially. All our local club rides are passionately bridled around strava segments making for saucy spicy rides. Not sure what the big deal is. There site is not littered with add banners and obnoxious advertising.

Yeah, I had an interaction like that with Phil Gaimon. He was doing a Facebook poll about whether or not to motorpace one of his KOM attempts. I told him very politely that he shouldn't because it was explicitly against Strava's policy. He completely ignored me and kept going with the poll. (Though the end result was not to motorpace).

As I stated, I was not aware of their financial infrastructure. I haven't really read up on Strava since the very early days when data was a big part of their plan. The money from data certainly seems nice though, I'll take that in cash or check any day.

Do you happen to know how many paying subscribers they currently have on the platform?

I never really understood subscribing to Strava and after this move I still don't have any need to subscribe. I haven't sniffed a top 100 in Boulder, so I'm definetly not in the running for any leaderboards.

Does this decision by Strava open the door for one of the other platforms to take some market share by weekending their platforms?

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Team Zoot 2023

It's currently uninsurable. As soon as Strava (or anyone) collects an entry fee for a virtual race conducted outside, they have liability. I have been talking to some RDs, who are looking at trying to put on some virtual events this year and they are trying to find someone to write an acceptable insurance product. It hasn't been that difficult for virtual running events, but what one RD has told me the cycling is a higher liability and right now nobody would provide a product that had a large window (like say a whole week).

This will get worked out, but even putting on a virtual race is not simple and each individual event would have to be insured separately. For a regular race, the liability is confined to a relatively small time window and the risk can be mitigated by controls the RD can enforce. For a virtual race, there is no way to put any mitigations in place and there is a much longer exposure time. I imagine it is a kind of challenging product to develop, just because of the unknowns, so to the extent insurers were willing to offer it, I assume they would price it at a premium until they had some historical information about the expected losses.

If anyone ever got a job out of a Harvard alumni connection, it provided a product to an end-user; therefore de-facto it is an end-user product.

And again, I enjoy the irony in your observations. Facebook was originally a "Harvard student network" and you are trying to claim the social network (because a social network is comprised of people and relationships; any software that may be used to communicate is just a tool, it is not the actual network) comprised of Harvard Alumni (which predates FB by hundreds of years) is not a social network.

Just out of curiousity, do you have a degree in computer science or mathematics (Graph theory) or did you stay at a Holiday Inn last night and get overconfident?

Noting this is a predominantly USA forum, then I'll just add a side comment that down here in the land of no claims (New Zealand - where we have a national accident compensation system that negates any compensation claims) the opposite has happened. I'm being bombarded with 'virtual race' emails which I admit is a total mystery. Every organiser is asking me to pay $20 to enter a 'race' where I go out on my own do my own thing, and then they post me a medal.

But, surely the Ironman Virtual Races that had a mix of indoor and outdoor (including the hill descents) had that liability issue. And they are the most USA of corporations I can think of outside of Ford and CocaCola.

That's your takeaway on my post?

I think this is in interesting comment from reddit
I'm not a big Strava user so I really don't have an opinion either way.




level 1
PositiveCurrent6
55 points
·
2 hours ago
I'll copy paste my rant to a friend over it which gives more than my 2 cents.

In my opinion .... nothing has changed in basicly 10 years... they've totally failed to innovate or develop new features ... i mean becon, route builder ... that's it. They've totally neglected masses of forms of income. they've got a platform which they could use for advertising and sales shamelessly and i bet people wouldn't even care. They have data on which running shoes you have. Cool, track how long before they're fucked. Sell that data for 10000 people back to the manufacturer so they can continually improve their shoe designs. You send me an email saying "yo dawg your shoes are knackered" "oh cool. Want to sell me some new ones? no? ok fine" But they can't even do that because they collect the information in free text because they're morons... Same with tyres etc etc. You have a service due on your bike, check out these bike mechanics in your area.

Oh what's that? you have a new race in the calendar. Have a training plan, we'll sell you that.

They have the ability to collect data on, activity, exercise, purchases, nutrition, kit, wear times, injuries " We've noticed you havn't exercised lately, are you injured? can we reccomend you PTs, Physios? how about a rehab training course focusing on XYZ and the other" There's so damn fucking much they can do with it .... but they're fools.

They've got the opportunity to be the google of exercise. instead they're cutting off their supply of money (Data) and killing the only aspect which keeps the platform running and that's it being a social network. because even if i pay for it ... a load of people wont and will stop using it. so the social aspect will be gone and it'll die.

you poked, and you poked again, with snide remarks. and then you finally got a poke back, to which you take umbrage. there is nothing but good information on this thread. your informed commentary is welcome. would be welcome. your style is a problem. consider that.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

The more I think about it, the more I believe the lead is being buried. Strava putting Segments details behind a paywall is the sexy headline, but the issue that might really cause people pain, depending how they handle it, is moving Training Log to the subscription plan. If you've chosen Strava to be your "Master Fitness Log" and they suddenly put years of your history behind a paywall, that's the bigger breach of trust, in my opinion. In the most technical sense, I understand that nobody is owed anything for free. But when you offer, or even solicit, to host somebody's fitness history data gratis, the implication is that you will continue to allow free access to that history. Strava are within their rights to later ask people to pay to continue to access it, but it almost feels like blackmail, especially given that any number of other places continue to offer this service at no cost. I got in before the change and was able to extract my data, but I have several hundred manually uploaded workouts (mostly pool swims & treadmill runs) that I'm not sure I can easily bulk transfer to Garmin Connect, or any other platform.

---

"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

Agree. I use ride with gps and final surge.
- Ride with GPS does have leader boards, albeit very limited, but I mainly use it for route planning and such. Most of the rides in our area use this and it is easy to download event and ride routes.
- Final Surge is my “record” site where I can see my stats.

This gets well at how I feel.

Good points all around.

So..you don't really have a degree or the qualifications ;-) As Slowman said, you kept poking and poking, but then you took offense when someone poked you back.

It's a worse decision if the company doesn't institute some sort of revenue generating model and goes out of business. That's the math they did. I also pay for TrainingPeaks and additionally pay for Strava Summit. I pay for Strava Summit exclusively for the Beacon feature. Before I leave for a long Bike ride the feature sends my wife a link where she can track my ride in real time. I've researched other companies that offer this safety and tracking feature, and this is by far the cheapest.

Cyclists will pay $2,000 for a wheelset, but are upset over a $5 per month subscription for an app they use and enjoy daily?

It's called http://www.RideWithGPS.com. Been around for years and their segments stink by comparison.

Garmin Connect does that for free, but then again you'll need a Garmin device.

I don't recall reading about this in DCR's article or elsewhere. Was this something that was also removed?

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

Good to know. I use a Wahoo Bolt when riding, but have a Garmin for my Run and Swims. Wahoo also have Live Track.

Or just use the "Find My Iphone/Friends" app (or the Android equivalent).

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

Life360 handles both iPhone and Android (together, even)...and there's a free version ;-)

---

http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

Huh...and yet the Training Calendar still appears to be available without paying, with all the rides still in there and accessible.

BTW, the latest version of GoldenCheetah has a sync feature with Strava, so that's one way of extracting all your rides, if you don't have them already (I might have to check to see that functionality still works now, though)

Edit: just checked and the sync function in GC still works. So access to ride files isn't currently an issue. That said, this change basically broke the extra utility I had from Veloviewer. I originally subscribed to Veloviewer (~$15/year) in order to regain the ability to set my feed back to chronological. But, I really like the extra insight into the segments it gave...and now that Strava saw the error of their ways with the chronological feed..

---

http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

try the experiment as in the article - see how much of the internet works, when you block all AWS/Amazon sites. Not much..

I've had a subscription with Strava for a number of years now (why? I'm not sure because WKO5 is way better for the data.). If Strava were to stumble into this thread my wish list as a paying subscriber is give me an option on the PC and mobile version to turn off the stupid over excessive challenges listed on my feed. Not only ones that I can choose, but all the countless challenge acceptances and/or achievements from those I follow. I don't care if someone achieved one of those challenges! I really would love to turn that off.

otherwise carry on :-)

I have turned off connections for Strava to collect any of my data. Will continue to use Training Peaks and Garmin as well as look at other options. Maybe I will go back maybe not.

Mine was available this morning. Just logged back in, now it's blocked.

---

"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

Mine was available this morning. Just logged back in, now it's blocked.[/quote]
Yeah, I anticipated this a while back. Downloaded all my Strava rides into Dropbox, and started syncing all my new rides directly to Dropbox in parallel with all the sites I used.

A bit of a bummer because Strava's database search capabilities are truly unparalleled. But I just don't fully trust that I'll have unfettered access to that database (even paying).

The app changed for me this morning. I mainly use the route builder, which is fantastic if you have a certain amount of time you can be out (kids, wife, etc.) I use it all the time for new routes to figure out how long they will take to ride (its pretty damn accurate). Segments I use to compare my times, I don't really care about how I compare to others as I have seen an old co-worker who rides an e-bike on leaderboards so I figure its useless. Another thing I like is the ability to see how many miles you have on your bike for maintenance (chain swap).

I have no problem paying them. They create a product, I like some of it, don't use some of it. So what. Plus, about 8 years ago I emailed them and their VP of product responded and we had a back and forth on the product. I appreciate things like that.

Both Android and iOS have plenty of free options that will do what Beacon does.

changed over for me today as well. "new" free version of segment page is essentially useless. if i were new to strava, i would find nothing of interest or value viewing this page. as i said before, the "hook" that gets in interested in following your times, or others you may or may not know IRL is now gone. If I were a new user, there is nothing now to differentiate this app from other fitness trackers, or route building apps.

It's useless for me now too.

Really, the thing I liked was my training log but since that's gone I'll stick to TP since I already pay for that.

The Glypmse app reports your position as well, and it's free.

---

-- Scott

here's my question, because i'm a STRAVA premium member, but i don't use their training log. i use our own here. so, i don't know.

are you saying that you MUST be a STRAVA premium member or you're locked out of your data? that's a little shitty if it's the case. one would think some warning would be in order. beyond that, i have no quarrel with STRAVA charging.

i would assume, tho, that the worst case is you pay to be a premium member, you export your data, and then you cancel. is that the protocol, if you want to migrate to a different log?

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

seems kinda silly because the training log and the training calendar are basically the same thing just in a different format.
weird how they made one part of the paid membership and the other one not......

No, you still have all of your data. You can either go through your own feed or go to the training Calendar (which is different than the training Log). The training log will tell you how much SBR you've been doing weekly/monthly iirc. Calendar will just have all of your activities on a calendar.

I've had a chance to go in and poke around on the updated free desktop/browser site. The "Training Log" link is blacked out, indicating it's a subscription-only feature. However, access remains for "My Activities," which you can still sort by Date, Title, time, Distance, or Elevation; ascending or descending. You can search for any activity (or activities) by keyword, and you can limit your search to a particular Sport (default is "All Sport Types"). Each Activity Title is a hotlink to the actual Activity page.


Also, the "Training Calendar" is still available, where total cumulative training hours, miles, and activity counts for all sports combined can be seen by year and by month. In the month view, there are also hot links back to the actual activities. The snazzy bar graphs showing training miles by week (annual page) or day (monthly page) are still there, too.

What's missing are the weekly totals that are in Training Log, and the ability to see any cumulative training hours and/or mileage segregated by Sport, although you can get some of the latter in the "My Stats" area of your profile.


So, it's a bit less useful than it used to be, but it's not like they completely blocked you from accessing your history. You can still see all your individual workouts sequenced in various ways, as well as some high-level aggregate data by month and year. Seems satisfactory for free-ware, especially if you consider it in the context of everything else they are giving away with the free service. Now that I've seen what's still available for free, I do not feel hard-done by the change. If I had one wish, it would be the ability to set a date range for the "My Activities" list. But, as the old saying goes "Beggars can't be choosers."


TL;DR-They didn't go full A-hole the workout history. Pay-walling "Training Log" is not the disaster I feared it might be. You can still see your stuff.



As for the new free Segments page, I'm inclined to agree with jflan that the it seems far less likely to "hook" a new rider than the old one. Not being able to see where you stand relative to any of your friends, or see how your effort compares to past efforts (other than your current ET vs your PB ET), reduces the immediate-interest factor considerably. As my interest in Segments is not what it once was, I'm personally not that chapped about the Segments update. But I'm honestly not sure how engaged I would have stayed with Strava at the beginning had the free Segments page looked like it does now. I might still be happily chugging along on RideWithGPS.

---

"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

not entirely locked out of my own data, training calendar will let me go back and look at any ride/run/kayak etc i have ever uploaded. but i can't use the segment pages to compare any of those efforts. even on private segments i've created. so today i did a zwift race and wanted to see how my leith hill time compared to the past....can't do that without looking through the calendar to find every zwift ride where i did leith hill....essentially impossible. and since zwift leaderboards are ridiculous in the first place, the only useful way to look at them was with the filter...those i follow, clubs, or my past efforts. so now it's useless. zwift needs to capitalize on this.

To test this, I'm requesting Strava's "bulk dump" feature as a non-paying user.

Hopefully I'll get a link to massive dump of like 9 years of GPX files (hopefully with power data). Any maybe all the pictures and comments I've ever made too.

Hopefully with power data. I know at one point there was some issue with bulk download stripping out power data. Which is anathema to any red blooded 'twitcher.

Stava segments have a negative connotation for a lot of people that they find the app off-putting. To get a good time on a Strava segment, you sometimes have to bend the rules whether they be laws (like stop signs, speed limits, right of way), etiquette to the trail or other users, or safety. Maybe the greyed out leaderboard for the majority of users will reduce this once the worst offenders realize that they don't belong in the top 10.

I would have loved to see the ability for segment creation go to only subscribers, that would limit the amount of terrible segments being created.

yes, that would make too much sense though! segment creation should be a pay feature, as should the sorting by weight, age, etc.... but the full board should be available to the free version and also my historical results. without those at a minimum, i can't see any reason to bother to look at leaderboards.

OK, I'm truly impressed with the bulk data dump.

It was fast and easy.

And it's *everything*. Every picture, every ride (with power data, looks like the raw upload), every post comment, every route created. Settings, flags, preferences. Everything.

Some nostalgia looking at stuff from like 10 years ago.

Only minor quibbles, like there's no dates on the pictures so they're all a big jumble.

But overall Strava knocked this one out of the park.

It's not about 5€ but their basic stuff is not even as expected. It's a real jungle in segments, new world records. They should have at least a basic verification algorithm so a ride \run can be in leaderboards. They can do so much and they have nothing in last 6 years, nothing. They need to have way more value in the product.

Not really to rehash this since I didn't see the comment until now. I just want to point out that his style ain't exactly the best either. In the space in which I work I have built data sets and surveys and the data is very valuable to whom I've worked with and for. I'm not exactly taking umbrage with anything.

This thread though would be great data for Strava. It has many customers, both subscription and non-subscription stating their opinions. All individual data points that can be configured to provide an overarching consumer opinion of the decision made by Strava. Looking in this thread, Twitter, and Facebook. There are quite a lot of negative opinions. The data we give Facebook, Instagram, Strava, MapMyRun, etc is very valuable. I will stand by that because I've seen how companies make decisions based on data.

However, with that you know my opinion on what Strava is, so this will be the last of what I write in this thread.

---

Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

My Training Log has just updated and now shows all types of activities with a filter to just show the ones you want, unlike where anything other than swim/bike/run used to show as just a "XT". So it look's like they are rolling out a bunch of updates to the site at the same time as this paywall. Their graphs and stats are also a lot better now than the last time i saw them a few years back. Maybe they will address a lot of the old standing requests that are out there (and fingers crossed custom colours lol) :-)

---

@the.lazy.triathlete

https://www.strava.com/athletes/18691068

I like the new training log. Finally! I was using veloviewer to view historic data to compare years and training time that included xc skiing.

See my edit above. Sync in GC still works.

---

http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

I'm still seeing it...

---

http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

Training Calendars are free and are remaining. Training Logs are paywalled.

Much of the confusion is most people didn't even know they had a training log and so are slightly up in arms that they are losing something they never used.........

It'll take time to get used to these crazy colors, but ZOMG finally I can see my strength stuff with SBR in one place!!! 5 years since this particular request, glad it got done regardless of what happens next...

I'm only replying this to Dan because there was no obvious post to reply to, and he's the head cheese around here... :-)

But, I thought a link to this piece by Cosmo Catalano (the guy who does the "How the Race Was Won" videos) deserves to be in this thread. It's a GREAT summary of the history/missteps/foibles of the Strava story, and pretty much captures my take on it as well. I've actually never paid for a subscription because after trialing it a few times I was always "meh" on the premium features, especially since I thought most of them were half-baked. Then, they started screwing with the feeds and all that other stuff during the "we want to be Instagram" phase, and I guess I'm just in the camp of "you need to show me you're actually going to listen to your users" before I give them money. Anyway, enjoy!

https://medium.com/...ou-back-b6928d6e8b5b

edit: And to be totally honest, probably about the only feature they paywalled that I'll really miss as it stands is being able to see my own historical results on a particular segment.

---

http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

17 cents a day and people are complaining. Incredible.

it's a good observation. It would be interesting to know what their current growth of new subscribers is (it may not be that large). But to your point, they may need to think about free "trial subscriptions" for new users, because if you didn't know what was behind the paywall, it probably would not seem to be worth the cost. I just kind of take for granted that everyone has had a trial subscription for the past 5 or 6 years;)

good link, his how the race was won videos were the best.

I'm not paying yet, and I just might, but I just checked on my page on a segment that I am outside of the top 10. Of course I could still see my own PR, but I could also see that I was in 57th place on that particular segment next to a link to "See the full leaderboard". I couldn't see anything else outside the top 10 naturally. I wrote earlier that pretty much the only things that are important for me are KOMs, Top 10s and my PRs. I thought I would not be able to see my ranking in any of my segments that were outside of the Top 10s, but those are still viewable. So, I am even less irritated than I was before ;)

---

The more people I encounter the more I love my cats.

I agree with your sentiment. Sound bad, but when you look at it, it's not that bad. It is nice to see some updates to the web UI and some new metrics, even if they aren't very useful. STRAVA is attempting to improve their service and add new features. We all shell out more money for TP than STRAVA is asking for and TP has barely pushed any updates in the last 5 years (that I am aware of at least).

it should change for you soon, and you won't like what you see. you will be more irritated!

If they take away my ability to see those 3 things on my own page then I might relent and pay. Or, I might just go to a competitor. The thrill of KOMs and Top 10s is wearing off, and at 52 years old my ornery old ass might not react well to a forced hand. For now, I'm okay with the changes

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The more people I encounter the more I love my cats.

57th is a 'serving suggestion'. It's a static image showing what it looks like if you had a subscriber account.

---

Shane Miller - GPLama
YouTube | Web | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Strava

This is good enough for me for anything outside of the Top 10s. I can see my own time and speed for that segment, and just how far I am off the pace for at least a Top 10, or KOM.

Edit: "my" typo correction

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The more people I encounter the more I love my cats.

Hang on. I'm going to cancel my subscription if it means I move up to 57th in all my segments.... Now that's clearly way better benefit/$ than any Enve Wheels, Skin suit made of Mermaid's mane or unicorn spit magic chain friction treatments.

.. as long as my clock works fine I would start thinking about paying for the STRAVA services when they paywalled the option to greet my old buddies doing a ride and we didn't met on the road .. oSo >>

---

*
___/\___/\___/\___ the s u r f b o a r d of the K u r p f a l z is the r o a d b i k e .. oSo >>

I am not sure who you are taking a dig at, but just in case, I just chose the very 1st segment on yesterday's ride as an example of what I can see on my page. Yesterday I wasn't in a skin suit, no aero helmet and shaved legs, I wasn't on a triathlon/TT bike, and I was barely even warmed up. As a matter of fact I was wearing MTB shoes and on a road bike with clip on aerobars. The KOM for that segment is simply a short segment of 0.48km at 56.3km/hr at 31 seconds at the very beginning of my ride, not unattainable at all. Everyone is writing about losing the ability to see their ranking out of the Top 10, my post was to show that you can still see at the very least your ranking. 57th is nothing to brag about and if you think I was bragging about that then you are mistaken.

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The more people I encounter the more I love my cats.

It think value proposition become extremely difficult with subscription services. With a subscription you don't really know the long term total cost nor the long term total benefit as both these things will change with time. This works well if value in the subscription is something immediate and so can be readily valued in the short term. Basically what you are getting what you pay for no matter what the future holds. With Strava the value is really in the longer term. Its being able to compare year-on-year efforts and the promise that Strava has explicitly made in the past few days that by investing now things will get better. The net results is you are being asked to take a gamble in terms of return on investment

Strava may go out of business in a month and then you lose everything. Or they may rapidly change the payment structure again so cost quadruple. This risk is part of the value equation. Strava appears to be aware that the service they are offering isn't worth the cost for most people unless they throw down some longer term promises. More directly $0.17 a day is too much to ask for for the current offering unless they can sure up the longevity. On paper the correct statements have been made but its too early to tell if they well be delivered.

Another way to think about the equation is to compare Strava with Zwift. Zwift does promise continual improvements but what they are selling is the very much the product you see here an now. The value is what you get today and not what you do with that in future. Strava really is the opposite. Little to no value in the moment but the value builds with time the more you use it and can look back at the data. So with Zwift I can easily make a decision over the value but with Strava its much harder.

Because instead of making the premium, paid version so good that people want to use it, they are taking features away from free users in an effort to get them to pay. And by the way, without users, they have no segments or route builder.

You’re welcome for the data to build your platform, Strava. The least you can do is keep the user-based features free and advertise.

---

"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

$59, invested every year for 25 years at the low interest rate of 5% with a 1% variance and annual compounding is $3,000. or $0.17 a day.

I have no issue with Strava making this move. I already own a Garmin watch, a wahoo bolt, I pay for training peaks, we pay for two TrainerRoad subscriptions, my wife is paying for Zwift, I am considering Rouvy. Strava doesn't offer me anything outside of that "social media" workout app appeal. I like to see where I stack up on the leader boards when I do a ride or run outside. However I am not addicted to that knowledge and I am not going to pay extra for that privilege. If I want to see my name on a leader board I guess I am going to need to get a top 10, which is fine. For now, I still have access to see where my weekly training hours are compared to club members and I like that. I also like being able to check in on what everyone is doing, thats still free.

All this being said, I will keep using the app and they can have my data in return.

---

Ironman Lake Placid 2021| 70.3 Worlds St. George 2021

Show me where I can get an interest rate of 5%!

Strava doesn't owe us anything. Its their product, and they need to make a profit. If they make poor decisions, then the company fails - but that's on them. I get that there is no longer this cool feature that we can no longer get for free, and that sucks. But its up to them how they want to run their product, which services to offer for which price, and how they want to manage their community. They have our data, yes, but it isn't nearly as valuable as people think.

That said, the feature I'm going to miss is Route Builder - There are other options but nothing that can instantly give me the popular route to a given area. If I'm in a new area or just wanting a new route around where I live, its hard to beat. RWGPS is doing a poor job at giving me what I know to be the common route to a given area.

The long term rate of the overall stock market is ~6%. Invest in some index funds, and don't look at it for 25 years.

I actually turned off my garmin connect to strava syncing this morning. Our data is worth money to them and if I don't get something simple in return for it, then I won't provide it. It's really no great loss for strava or I though because I only used it when I was testing fitness on various segments throughout the year.

Oh, I do. I just don't call stock market returns "interest," which is technically money returned as payment in exchange for money lent...was making a small joke that it's hard to get 5% for loaning money these days.

LR discussion, but it's a little sad that the only practicable way to build for retirement these days is to throw yourself into the stock market. I remember the quaint days when "laddering CDs," etc, was a reasonable means of saving for retirement.

I’m with ya- I could care less about leaderboards but I’ll probably sign up for the route builder.....it’s worth $5 a month to me.

So I guess their tactic worked as I’ve never even considered signing up before.

I disconnected all services to Strava and have contemplated deleting the account for this reason. The unsaid agreement was free data for free services - and now Strava wants me to pay them to monetize my data further? When I (and all the other users) provided them with data to build their platform on in the first place? Absolutely no way that's happening.

I'll feel the pain missing the mapping feature for a few weeks while I find a new alternative, but no way am I going to babysit these VC-funded fools who don't understand their value add. The folks who say they don't mind paying for the service don't understand the value of their data, in my opinion.

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KJ
Swim and Triathlon Coach
AllTerrainEndurance.com
KJ@allterrainendurance.com

if this is the end for Strava I won't be surprised. good riddance as far as I'm concerned, as I never really saw the appeal of the whole program. but I can certainly see how others might feel burned

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the world's still turning? >>>>>>> the world's still turning

Just an aside, I don't feel burned by Strava. 90% of it was that I enjoyed it the same way I enjoy social media - I liked seeing what my friends were doing, could celebrate with them when they PRd segments or took trophies, and it was fun when other folks noticed my work in the same way. The 10% that hurts is the ease of the mapping feature - but I can adapt to some other service's UI. My frustration and the bitter taste in my mouth is from a tone-deaf and out of touch attempt at monetization without recognizing their history (built by users) and the gravity of the current world state.

Not to be a broken record, but I have a fundamental issue with paying someone to make money off of data that I created. Free-for-free was fine (and even then, the value of my data - our data as users - far out-weighed the services Strava was provided but I guess that's part of the deal).

---

KJ
Swim and Triathlon Coach
AllTerrainEndurance.com
KJ@allterrainendurance.com

agree! I rode yesterday and had a great ride. Came home and looked at Strava. I was so underwhelmed of what i can now see and do that i asked myself....do i really need Strava.

I wish everyone for the month of JUNE would stop using Strava and we start a protest. Charge for new features but don't charge for what was free.

I'm hoping that someone, someday is able to do truly good things with the vast amounts of data.

I know Trainerroad is working on things, but haven't really harnessed the full power of what they have.

The guys related to Golden Cheetah started the OpenData project, which I think has incredible potential, but has seemingly stagnated (and no one replied to my pull request :( ). But that one warms my heart from the "openness" standpoint vs. VC-backed companies trying to wall off and monetize.

Strava likely has more data than anyone. Heatmaps were, in my opinion, just a hint at what's possible with all that data.

I'm not claiming I'm smart enough to know what those truly good things are. But I'll hand wave about AI techniques and stuff, and I just have a sense that there's something there, if someone can figure it out.

Absolutely agreed - and Strava had a really great opportunity to show what their value of aggregating all this data was by creating something proprietary. Instead, they chose to be a lesser version of the many training apps out there (TP, TR, Golden Cheetah, Final Surge.... I know there are more). If I knew the answer to what that proprietary value-add was, I'd certainly try to do something with it. But I don't - and the group at Strava either has thrown in the towel, or given in to VC pressure and lost their identity.

And to Greyhound - if 10 years of not being profitable didn't make Strava get their act together, I don't know that 1 month will, but I'm game. Maybe one month of stagnating and out-of-date data will prod them. Won't delete my account yet.

---

KJ
Swim and Triathlon Coach
AllTerrainEndurance.com
KJ@allterrainendurance.com

what terrible loss did you incur? The only thing I miss is GAP pace, but I can live with out that as elevation is still shown. Strava is pretty good quality for all the current free users.

Really you should question yourself with all the fancy equipment a typical triathlete can afford, paying for this should be nothing to whine about.

I've been a free user since 2005. I subscribed today, and really like the added premium features. Besides, it cost me nothing with the free trial through mid July. So I have the next few months to decide if I can bear to part with $60/year to support an app I get a lot of utility and enjoyment out of.

That and the analyze option... and the ability to see everyone in a leader board; mostly just to see who has ridden there.

Strava has come out with nice features like flyby (good for looking at races and group rides), but they've also gotten worse. Their computed watts used to be quite good on climbs (for me at least) but got worse a few years ago. Search has turned to crap lately. I asked them many years ago if they were interested in a much better "virtual watts" algorithm plus a better way to determine rides that were done in a vehicle (which I'd do for free), but got no reply.

Oddly on day 1 of the new Strava (yesterday) I got my 1st auto-flag for an activity that wasn't done in vehicle. No mention of why. I clicked the option "trust me, this was all done on a bike" but it was flagged again and that option removed. The only thing I could do was fill out a ticket to dispute their judgement. How long do you think that will take?...;) I got a couple KOMs on this ride, but the only spot that might have looked odd was where I was going >50mph on a -4% grade for a couple minutes. Nothing too weird; I had a good tailwind and was drafting a truck. There wasn't even a segment there. My average speed for the 38 mile ride was 13 mph.

I quit using mine but I’m not sure they would even notice. They are probably using easy metrics like how many new subscribers vs. how many deleted their accounts. So I guess I might have to download my data and delete my account. You can always sign up again...

Wasn't there a time when Strava limited you to 6 uploads a month, or something like that? I got into the habit of uploading tuesday night worlds and any races, so everyone could compare to each other and exchange war stories. I thought that was a reasonable compromise. Been doing that for years and tracking workouts and fitness with my own spreadsheet and Golden Cheetah.

Glad to see the KOMs feature going. The racing scene here has been really adversely affected by that and group rides turning into a ****show everytime we hit a popular segment - looking forward to seeing riders test themselves by pinning on a number and going for it.

I wasn't having a dig at anyone, or I guess if anyone then at myself as someone who would actively do something to increase my ranking to #57 in a non race which as of now less than 1% of people could ever see. IE be totally rediculous. And also at myself, perhaps all of slowtwitch in relation to the extreme lengths and dollar spend we go to to save a milliwatt in the hope of shaving a second off an ironman bike split.


Back to the bigger discussion, DC Rainmaker a few months back suggested that strava had 50million registered users and about 1% subscribers. So the notion of 'hooking people in' and turning them into paying users clearly isn't effective. To double their income they either need to find another 50m users with the same mix of pay/non pay. Or hope that of the current users just 1.1% of them elect to start paying. And don't worry if some (10-20, 50% of the current non paying users) stop using their service. What will be interesting is how many of the people that have made multiple posts on here expressing negative sentiment actually make the same effort to actually disconnect/delete their data. My speculative guess would be that rate would be less than 50%.

I disconnected everything from Strava and did a data dump yesterday. Guess I should hit the delete button, too, if we're thinking that's the metric they're using. So at least 1 person went through the effort.

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KJ
Swim and Triathlon Coach
AllTerrainEndurance.com
KJ@allterrainendurance.com

the problem is they took something that was free and now they are asking to be paid. as much as i don't want to reward them for this behavior i will probably pay the $5 per month so i can be satisfied. Its not like they don't deserve my money. they do and i really enjoy strava and looking at segments but give me break when they say this change is to make things better for user experience.

What exactly do you feel you would be gaining by completely deleting your account? If they added new features in the future that you wanted or somehow backed off the new subscription terms you would have to re-load all your historically information (not sure if you can easily do that by uploading a single file). It sounds like you think you are going to teach them a lesson or something, like if I lent you my toy and now I want it back you are saying we can't be friends anymore.

I'm flabergasted by how a relatively large number of people on this thread are acting like they were personally harmed by Strava's decision. You weren't paying them any money, and to the extent you were providing anything of value (your data), they were providing a lot more data back to you in return. At this point, unless you feel they owe something for what has occurred up to now (please explain?), it's hard to see why you would have any feelings at all. When my cable company runs a promo and then it ends, I don't get personally mad at the cable company (beyond the general fact I hate that they have a monopoly;), I just switch back to regular service. I don't say, I'll show them and cancel the cable out of spite. Just because they weren't calling the "free" service a "promo" up until now, doesn't mean it was effectively the same thing as a promo.

To they extent that they changed the terms of the exchange, it's hard to say you were harmed. To the extent that you feel you are harmed it would indicate you felt you were getting the better end of the deal until now (in which case even with their change of terms, you still got the better of the relationship over the time it existed).

As a premium subscriber (so I have thought it was worth it for several years), I don't really have any opinion on this (beyond that it is a business decision), but find myself fascinated by how people are interpreting what happened.

I'm assuming they modeled the possible effects of defections due to this change. If they hired a psychologist to analyze the likely reasonings people would come up with for defecting i think it would be pretty entertaining to read.

I imagine they derive/have historically derived most of their revenue from advertising and sponsorship/partnerships and have been significantly impacted by the pandemic. All their eggs are in the endurance sports (a luxury hobby) basket. With the niche interests they cater to, they would face significantly more risk exposure in a sudden downturn than Facebook/Google even before accounting for any advantages the platforms of Facebook/Google have.

While losing segments sucks, why is it evil to monetize one of the more valuable features of the platform if the business is struggling and needs immediate cash flow to survive at all? I know nothing about Strava the company specifically, but I am quite certain they know how much engagement the free segments have driven and the risk a move like this has on the future of their platform; that they went ahead anyway is a pretty good indicator of how much they need to. Anecdotally, the 180 employees mentioned is steep decrease from other (older) numbers that show up in a Google search.

It may well be the case that their business is only vulnerable at this point due to historical issues with monetization/innovation, but that's an entirely different discussion. Random point regarding their headcount and the cadence of platform upgrades: only a (large) fraction of their headcount are R&D folks, and not all of those folks would be focused on the platform.

Super valid questions, I think I've addressed them.

Completely deleting my account? Not a lot is gained. They have my data and that's part of the user agreement when you sign up. As far as re-loading historic information? That's not really what I use Strava for so that's not a HUGE deal to me, but yes, is a consequence of deleting your account. I don't agree with your comparison to the toys/friends: it's more of you lent me your potato, I added Mr. Potato Head parts under the assumption we'd still be playing together, and now you want to charge me rent to use my Mr. Potato Head parts. Not cool, bud. :)

Being personally harmed? I don't think my reaction is one assuming personal harm. They didn't personally harm me, but they did take an action that I take serious umbrage with. I do feel they owe me (and my fellow users, early adopters, etc.) access to the features we helped build by uploading our data in the first place. The features they used to set themselves apart are what the user base built through the GPS data. And they have a pretty decent monopoly on that. In addition, Strava has been hell-bent on protecting 'their' (my! yours! ours!) data against other groups (i.e., Relive, Ironman) - that wasn't for the end user benefit, even if that's what they claimed. They were protecting their IP which is exactly what I'm doing by no longer sharing my data with them.

I also think it's quite ludicrous to assume anyone thinks they're getting the better end of the deal - Strava was getting invaluable information (user data) for free and monetizing it. And they were providing a cool service in return. This is how tech companies work. But to claim that the potential use of that data isn't a better deal than the 'service' provided is overreaching - see, Facebook/Instagram, Google, and so on.

I've spoken with quite a few friends who are Premium subscribers and they said the same thing - they saw a value so they don't mind paying for it. While that argument seems backwards to me, and no one has yet defined what set Strava apart (now I can list a few things that you have to pay for, but up until this week I couldn't), different folks will always find value in different places. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't agree with you. And that's ok.

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KJ
Swim and Triathlon Coach
AllTerrainEndurance.com
KJ@allterrainendurance.com

Can you upload this data to Golden Cheetah, Garmin Connect or other platforms?

Gotcha. It's hard to tell online (or I am just dense AF).
Good point though. I think more than a few non-paying members will redneck up (WTF that means) with "I can see the KOM holder and Top 10, so that is good enough for me. I'll buy me an extra Budweiser a week instead."

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The more people I encounter the more I love my cats.

You need to use present value for that to make any sense.

$0.17/day is only $0.0000002/second... so cheap! Or if you like big numbers, it's $6,000 over 100 years.

The problem I see is that a lot of people have only a vague, passing interest in segments and KOMs, certainly not enough to pay for it, irrespective of how low the price. This isn't Spotify or Netflix. I think Strava have over estimated how invested people are in segments.

I honestly haven't tried. The file types within the "Activities" folder are mostly .fit.gz, with some .gpx and .tcx.gz. Routes are .gpx files. Gear, connections, activities, comments, pretty much everything else are within .csv files, so it seems like pretty much everything is there. Photos you uploaded too.

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KJ
Swim and Triathlon Coach
AllTerrainEndurance.com
KJ@allterrainendurance.com

I don’t see how providing a service and platform is a problem.

The memo I read said that they were financially incapable of continuing without charging for services. They just had to figure out a way to slice and dice it and price it.

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https://www.strava.com/...tes/zachary_mckinney

If that's true then this move is a perfect way to assess that. If no one signs up then it clearly wasn't worth their time maintaining and supporting those features.

I dunno, using Zwift even once per week I've started caring a LOT LESS about Strava segments.

Zwift dangles a carrot LIVE for you. You even get a LIVE jersey if you get it! It's so interactive and fun to chase sprints and KOMs and PRs on Zwift it makes Strava live segments look like dog food versus Coq au vin.

Either way, if it shows you PRs who really cares if you're outside the top 10 what actual place it is?

I've started to "cry in the dojo" on Zwift and structuring free-riding after KOMs and sprints or group rides or workouts centered around that as my "work" and made the outdoors rides more of the "whatever for fun" rides. I choose a logical route for a workout like 3x8's or 2x20. I mean, 2x20 is two times up the Watopia climbs. 3x8 would be the volcano climb. Etc...

I got a Zwift KOM jersey for a few minutes last night. It's fun. Folks see it then randomly want to ride with you afterwards till you lose it.

Did anyone notice they released a new route builder?

Their strategy doesn't make sense at all. Release bad news the same day you launch a new product?
The only reason I knew it existed was I happened to need to look up a previous route I did.

The router builder shows a better heatmap, road surface. Still missing a huge important tool imo which is the ability to insert additional waypoints mid route

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IG - @ryanppax
http://www.geluminati.com
Use code ST5 for $5 off your order

Have not read all 200+ comments, so sorry if this is duplicated.....I do not really care for the segment feature because the algorithm Strava uses is terrible and someone that clearly is on a bike for a run segment should not be allowed. So why would anyone want to pay money for a feature that is literally a digital badge that you can easily cheat for? Why not focus on fixing the segment algorithm so that there is some integrity behind it?

I think they changed the auto flag algorithm recently, since I got my first ever auto flag on a bike ride on Tues. Unfortunately it appears to be brain dead. My guess is that it auto-flags if the computed power is higher than what is possible on a bike, but doesn't allow for tucking, tailwinds, and drafting on a descent... which wasn't even a segment. I had to fill out a ticket to have the activity reviewed...

It wouldn't be hard to make a good algorithm, but I wonder if anybody there understands physics or even rides a bike. They've added some good features over the years, but just as many things have gotten worse.

One that still annoys me is there is a segment on one of my regular routes that Strava consistently confuses with an adjacent road. The segment is a short uphill sprint, while the other road is a descent, and the end of the sprint is where it intersects the other road. My personal top 10 for that segment is all from rides where I didn't even do that segment, and even the GPS track shows that I was on the other road. Strava even has me tied for 11th overall, and I don't think I've ever even been 11th in any group ride I've done up that segment (especially not on 114w for my PR)...

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"I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10, and I don't know why!"

Excellent comparison, and this is exactly why I think the $5 is simply nor worth it... I don't care if it's a cup of coffee or two or whatever. The $5 are 38% of the cost of say Netflix or Spotify premium. For me, specifically, I can't justify that cost for KOM's and, to be honest, shitty segments when there can be tons on a route, some of them different than others with ZERO standardization and true metrics. I find zero value on that, and as such, i find zero need to pay for it. This is why this decision was puzzling to me because really what Strava should be doing is working with the volume of data for advertising and keeping and increasing the volume of free subscribers. But that's just an opinion. I respect whomever disagrees, after all it's your money not mine.

I have my doubts about the physics ( maybe I should submit a resume) but former pros they have hired include Elle Anderson and Neil bezdek. Bezdek is still hammering the p12s at our midweek crit.

most people crying and complaining about segment loss really are just losing this:

Damnit. How is anyone going to know about my:
Fastest Time from my couch to my bathroom in the morning
Fastest Time from my bed to the bathroom between 3:30 and 4 am
Fastest Time to from the front door to my car when it's the 2nd car in the driveway
Fastest Time from the car to the kitchen counter with 3 plastic grocery bags on each arm
Fastest Time from the 2nd bush on the right hand side of the house to the 4th step up to the deck

quoted from letsrun heh

I wonder if they set the rate at $1 a month. I would pay. (probably would get same amount of money each way from more users). $5 gets into my zwift budget. but also a partnership can be there... The database and algorithms must be nuts to maintain, as im a former IT guy.

I will probably sign up. Compared with what the sports of cycling/triathlon can cost, it's not a lot of dough, really.

After forking out for a subscription, I now find that I can't use Route Builder anymore - I can see my old routes just fine but just get a few preferences in the left hand side of the screen and no map at all if I try to build a new route.

Let's just say I'm not impressed......

Perhaps a risky strategy? I'm not up to date with Photobucket's fortunes, all I know is they offered a free service to customers for years, decided to suddenly charge for what they previously offered for free, thinking that if even 20% paid for it, they would be rolling in it. Unfortunately they didn't understand their target market, every man and his dog fucked off. They limped along for a bit, then relented and offered the photo sharing for free again, albeit with a watermark. Too late sunny Jim. That ship had well and truly sailed. So for some companies it's simply not possible to go back to where they were. People are fickle, people don't like free shit being taken away from them, people become embittered and don't forget. People won't sign up for Strava Premium purely on principle, irrespective of how little it costs. Strava could charge $1/month it wouldn't matter and that's what they don't get. RIP Strava.

As someone who does like looking at Segments, the thing that keeps me from paying is that they aren’t easily comparable across users.

I do most of my rides solo. Most KOM’s in my hood are set on big group rides.

It would appear to be pretty easy to segregate these multi-rider efforts from solo efforts. There would still be some problems with the data, but my bet is most who ride in those big groups are recording and uploading to Strava.

I would pay to have cleaner data.

I won’t pay to have to play detective and see how my effort stacks up against others.

I think the reason I am so disappointed by this is that the need to make these features premium is the result of what seems like years of mismanagement and lack of development. I started using strava ~10 years ago in college and loved the social aspect and leaderboards, and started paying about 7 years ago when I got a power meter, and really appreciated the added analysis I could do on power data. Since then, I haven’t seen many (any?) improvements to the platform that really excite me. Their big announcement email basically said “Hey, look at us making updates finally. We even reverted to a feature of chronological feeds that we had 5 years ago. Progress!”

They failed to find a way to keep the leaderboards engaging for 98% of people in high density areas (I can only get so excited about trying to get in the top 200). I know You can check where you rank for the year or month, but it is out of the way and feels weird, especially since it is on a calendar and not a rolling basis, so beginning of the year or month that feature is pointless. Also, why is the leaderboard still not expandable on mobile?

The route building feature still sucked as of a few weeks ago (haven’t tried the new one). A couple examples: I was trying to have it take me down a commonly ridden road, but had to drop waypoints every mile or so because it kept wanting to make me do a u-turn, climb back up the hill I was trying to descend, go down a different road, and take a busy two lane highway to get the point where the roads intersected. Also, They have all my power data, all my ride data, all my segment data, and they still estimate the time it will take to complete a route you build by mileage alone with no regard for my Ability or the elevation involved. That just strikes me as lazy for one of their supposed core features.

They’ve never even tried to incorporate or let you track nutrition on rides, which is a basic component of performance. Ditto for sleep.

Their promo challenges (which is a new feature in the past few years) seem to be poorly targeted - if I ride a few hundred miles most months, why are they showing me a “challenge” to ride 50 or 100 miles in a month to get a badge? That doesn’t engage me at all.

They have an opportunity to create revenue And help me through linking me to products they know I need based on time and mileage - new chains, shoes, bike maintenances at a local shop, etc. Instead, they seem to operate under the assumption that people are averse to being sold anything, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case if it is stuff they need.

Basically, I’m sad that a product I could really enjoy hasn’t engaged me more. I’m happy to pay the monthly membership for myself (and would even pay a bit more) because of the power analysis features, but frustrated that they weren’t able to create compelling new features that would make it worth it for others to upgrade, so had to resort to limiting the functionality for most In order to generate more subscribers. Strava has been and could continue to be a huge asset to the endurance community, but continues to fail to live up to its potential By failing to substantially improve, and this just seems like another step in that saga. Hope they can figure it out.

It’s like ten bucks a month. You won’t pay for both?

Like 4 gels?

Can already do this. Go to PC version. Hide all the crap segments. It makes it great again.

I am down to mostly just strava insider verified segments

Matt - I totally agree with your view(s).