[color=hotpink]That’s just them offering free brick workouts.[/color]
They make a lot more sense as an acquisition than an IPO. As a social network they need a much bigger user base to monetize effectively through advertising (even Twitter/X struggles with profitability; you need FB/IG scale). They haven’t been able to come up with premium features that enough folks will pay for to work as a subscription model and they can’t afford to drive away the free users who provide the network effects. They might make sense as Garmin’s entry into premium subscriptions (ignoring Garmin’s existing, weak offerings).
You can also search for local routes in the area you will be, under Training & Planning/courses and see what other people have run and uploaded. Find something suitable run by others and then send it to your garmin watch and run it with navigation
I think you are making the point that the strava lawyers are trying to…..
That said I personally have found the heatmap sourced routes on Strava to be a lot more reliable than when I use the Garmin connect builder. So if I’m going to a new city then I use strava to generate some routes on screen then normally recreate in Connect.
I always use Garmin connect as it is data of runs or rides that people have done in the area. Especially as I don’t subscribe to Strava, for me it is nothing more than a fitness social media platform, to give kudos to friends and see how people do in races, if they don’t post it anywhere else.
I used that tool a bit to create local routes but I am not so convinced by Garmin. Garmin should have bought Komoot when it was still good, their routes usually are really spot-on.
I agree. I think Strava’s best chance is to fully lean into the social community and just accept that people won’t sign up to their pro subscription for training plans etc. How do people see the potential for Strava getting into race calendars, race promotions & event organization? There is a huge social media base that can be easily leveraged to promote races and events. They could do like ACTIVE, take a sweet registration sign-up fee. It would be arguably a bit of a pivot and they may be way too late to the party…
In theory they have the contacts for pretty much everyone that is a potential customer for any run, ride or triathlon based on geography and the activities that they are uploading. So on one hand I could say “find me a half marathon” and Strava could tell me that the best 3 options based on the date, proximity and my current level of training versus where I would want to be for the race are X, Y Z. Or, and this is the tricky bit with their current subscriptions meaning no adverts, they could take a cut from organisers to market to all those people who are potential entrants….
But really I just want both Garmin and Strava to stay as they are…. Nothing’s broken, so don’t dick about with it.
They call it “Athlete Intelligence” instead of “Artificial Intelligence” for a reason. It’s just very basic procedural analysis imho, with some hard coded phrases. And it’s also bad for that type of technology.
There will be nothing left to scrap together if it plummets, inho. There is an old saying in the internet business: customers are not loyal, they are sticky. Remember Altavista? Athletes will leave Strava en masse if it has problems to deliver its services flawlessly for some weeks. Yes, all the precious data. Athletes will survive, most have the fit files in Garmin Connect, Polar etc. anyway. Plus the tons of “How to rescue your rides from Strava while you can” articles you will see everywhere (including this site).
Real AI route planning would be a game changer. The machine knows my metrics and the training session (eg. 3hrs, including Z3 intervals). Then gimme a route without major roads, maybe some parts I did not ride yet, and push it to my bike computer. Ah, that would be nice.
I use Ride with GPS for route planning, it is better than Garmin’s and I can export a TCX and upload as a course to Garmin. Oh, and they have route searching with heatmap from all public activities/courses of their users.
I wonder if Strava will sue them as well… Maybe they’ll sue me for using the word “heatmap” in this post.
I am fine with things as the are too if Strava stays free but right now, Garmin is making a killing and ATH and if I understand it right, Strava stumbles limpingly to the IPO. If they don’t want to experience what happened to Komoot & Bending Spoons their financials have to improve. Komoot Team Says Goodbye | DC Rainmaker
And I think that’s the nub of it. I pay for the premium level, but barely use the premium features. I just find that I get a lot of value from it and so choose to pay for what I get. It’s a choice for most. Their main USP is the ‘free’. And they need to keep it that way as they get so much revenue from the data that is uploaded that they then resell as anonymized big data.
A lot of the ‘premium’ things are either naff - 10% discount codes you can only use in some countries, or very niche that most don’t use (or value) them. The subscription costs are on the high side of subscriptions in general too.
So they are caught between rock and hardplace unless they do manage to get something that is ‘on top’ of the core product that others see really valuable to add to premium. And a different shape avatar ‘shield’ isn’t that.
What exactly are Strava’s lawyers contending? Garmin had segments before them and it is data from Garmin’s devices that build heat maps. Strava’s lawyers must actually hate their client because they will make money, but they will lose and possibly big.
I think the issue isn’t simply heatmaps, the subtlety is the use of heatmaps to build routes. Ie we had heatmaps before, and we had route building. But the strava patent is to use the heatmaps to build routes. And so whilst Garmin may have had that from 2013 in connect, the strava case potentially suggests that was actually the Strava IP that they were using under their partnership agreement.
So perhaps this is Garmin’s fault for trademarking and announcing something in 2018 that actually was commonplace and just a slight incremental development of something that had been around 5 years.
It really can’t be their IP, they’re developing heat maps from Garmin user data. Strava is stupid. But they’ve been stupid for a very long time. Next they’ll sue over challenges.
