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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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).

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."

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

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)

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.