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

---

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.

---

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.

---

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

---

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%.