101–110 of 113 posts
The website can be slow at times, there's a strange difference in functionality and look and feel between the app and website. AND THEY STILL DO NOT SUPPORT MULTISPORT (brick/triathlon in single activity).
I'd guess segment leaderboards/KOMs/comparison is one of their most popular features - will be interested to see if this increases peoples take up of Summit.
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Given what you just said, isn't it logical that Strava would want to monetize that?
You lose the whole network/community effect. I'm not going to pay $60 a year to stick it to my mate who can't stick it back to me when he beats my record. It's their one feature that sets them apart from the rest and they just killed it.
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To be fair on Strava, they have made some effort to addressing this over the last few months: https://www.strava.com/subscription/whats-new
But now it's kinda obvious they only did this as ammo in preparation for today's announcement. I sincerely do hope they continue to add new features, there is a huge stack of requests and ideas still waiting in their support forums.
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I'm a "cyclist" who absolutely loves Strava and I couldn't care any less about segments or leaderboards or beating my friends on their favorite hill. I just like to track my bike rides. I know there's a core group of hardcore cyclists who use the app like you do, but I wonder if there isn't a much wider group of people who think it's cool to track their rides and that's it.
I actually just ride to beat segments and get in the top 3 at least. This will take out a huge part of enjoying cycling outdoors for me.
The biggest loss for me (if I wasn't subscribing) would be the "friends" leaderboard. I'm actually not that much interested in the obvious peer ranking on my home climbs (I already know how strong each of my cycling buddies are), but it's also a bit of a connoisseur feature when traveling (e.g. when it's not 2020): a famous col will have dozens of friends on it and none of them are even close to top 1000. The stories (when, why) are often more interesting than the times, even more so if it's not a famous col by a hidden gem, which then becomes a bit of an asynchronously shared experience.
Well, I started using Strava last week as a free user. Any good alternatives for bikers?
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To me segments and leaderboards are largely what have made Strava stand out. Take those away and I might not have much reason to prefer Strava to Garmin Connect or any number of similar apps.
You and others here are responding to this by noting that segments and leaderboards are their one defining, irreplaceable feature, which seems like a pretty strong case for charging for it :)
Strava's co-founders, who recently returned to run the company, sent a fairly transparent email to users about the changes. The rationale is clear: Strava needs to achieve profitability. They've been around for over 10 years and have completed 6 rounds of fundraising. They see three paths to profitability: 1) ads, 2) sell user data, 3) subscriptions. They're all in on option #3. The biggest challenge they face with s…
What might be keeping them from going deeper down the advertisement lane: at some point it becomes indistinguishable from selling user data. Sure, with Strava you don't need the adtech panopticon to reach some very specific audiences, but without opting into the panopticon they are cut off from all established online ad procurement processes.
And also there is d) stop being so damn expensive. This alone might make the ad path pointless, it could well be that Strava just happens to be more expensive per user than maximum ad monetization could ever be. If my personal bubble is in any way representative they are already taking in a lot of subscriptions. What we can't know at all is how Strava cost is structured: is it dominated by devs? operations? brand people? Of it's operations then their options are particularly limited and culling personalized leaderboards from free accounts could actually be more about saving expensive queries than about pushing subscriptions.
I totally understand wanting to push more people to subscriptions, honestly I find it a way more user friendly model than selling data, or doing other weird behind the scenes stuff. If you like this, pay us for it, and we'll keep making it. Shutting down an API makes sense of course - I mean an API doesn't come for free - someone has to maintain it, upgrade it, etc, but I just hate it. More walled gardens and data th…
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But now it's kinda obvious they only did this as ammo in preparation for today's announcement. I sincerely do hope they continue to add new features, there is a huge stack of requests and ideas still waiting in their support forums.
No, they did it because they lost entire years following ill-advised growth fantasies into nonexisting markets where every yoga session, every treadmill workout would somehow be a "Strava moment" and that would magically pay their bills. They completely neglected their incredibly successful (within scope) but not quite profitable core business. A few months ago they switched to salvage mode, going through those years…
I vaguely remember new features some 5+ years ago, or promises of fixing issues (that are still there), but that had stopped and all we got was a social-network-like feed. One would think with the data they have Metro would be able to profit from free users, but I guess not?
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I agree, I don't think they have much power. But what I said was they are relatively more powerful, and I meant compared to regular free users. Some 3rd-party devs will have apps with many, many users and those users will likely value the work the developer has put in. They will be forced to relay the news to all their users right now and I imagine they'll still be pretty angry about it. And I also entirely agree Str…
At least Strava is reasonable about getting your own data out of it. Not sure if this applies just to EU users, but it's easy to download a full archive with the original uploaded gpx/fit files (whether they came from a manual upload or a 3rd party). Last time I checked (which wasn't too long after GDPR was introduced), Garmin didn't really support a bulk download of the raw data, and neither did Fitbit.
https://forums.garmin.com/apps-software/mobile-apps-web/f/ga...
Here's a version I've improved a little + adding export of "wellness" data. This thread was a good reminder to push my changes out to github. https://github.com/bbbbbr/garmin-connect-bulk-export
Edit, add:
Lastly, while the UI has some quirks and it doesn't have a social component, My Tourbook is a solid offline, cross-platform alternative to the online fitness repositories. There is something to be said for having complete control over your data (make sure to do backups). http://mytourbook.sourceforge.net/mytourbook/