Strava cuts off leaderboard for free users, reduces third party apps

Giving zero days notice to your 3rd-party developers is one way to anger a relatively powerful bunch of your users. Many people will find today that their hobby/side-project is now dead in the water. I hope nobody was relying on any income from software using these APIs. But the 'best' bit:

"We realize these changes could be especially challenging for some of you, so they’ll be non-breaking for 30 days, returning empty data during that time so you can make necessary adjustments"

What on earth is non-breaking about this? I have not enjoyed working with the Strava API myself but thankfully I have not wasted as much time as some poor devs. The thing is a total mess as it is, parts of the API were effectively crippled beyond use following some bizarre privacy-based change some time ago.

Get your act together Strava.

This is pretty disappointing. Recently Strava seemed to be turning the corner, releasing new features that users wanted.

Totally understand their need to make money, seeing that they've raised 5 rounds from VC.

However, burning goodwill like this is super counterproductive. After all, most of my riding is on Zwift, I could also switch to Garmin, etc.

As a non-paying user, this seems to be mostly fair. I used to do pretty remote trail running, and the route building feature was great for putting together a route and exporting it to my watch. If I get back into that type of running, then I'd probably be willing to pay just for that feature.

Hiding the "friends only" leaderboard seems like a bad idea on their part. That feature definitely drove engagement and friendly rivalries. It's not the same if it's only amongst your paid subscriber friends, which is not many.

I appreciate them doing more to get users to pay. I've never paid for Strava, despite having been a very active user in the past. I generally like them as a network, and wouldn't want them to go away.

The immediately breaking API changes are pretty bad. I wonder what the impetus was behind that move. Too complicated to have it act as a transition? Maybe they could have announced these changes, but have them start in 30 days, with a small discount for users if you subscribe before then.

This is a great example of why it’s important to charge money for things up front, rather than later on. If they’d charged for these features from day 1, this could have been a glowing article about how their revenue model has helped them support feature development and build a third-party app ecosystem. They should have charged for it sooner.

I don't much care about these changes one way or another, but it would be very sad if they went away. For better or worse, they created far and away the best fitness platform for cyclists, if only because of the mindshare and network effects. Their analyses are also quite good. It would be a real pity if they went away, and I hope they stay solvent.

I've been a paying subscriber since I first joined in Aug 2018 and am happy to support it.