Strava is extremely frustrating. I've been a paid user for 10+ years. They do add features from time to time, but it's amazing how slowly it happens. There's a forum on their web site for user feedback and suggestions, but it seems like they pay little attention to the users. So many of their users that I know feel like a run or bike ride didn't happen if they don't record it on Strava. It's a super addictive and sticky product, yet Strava seems to squander this loyalty by ignoring their customers.

Route building and personal heatmaps are some of my favorite features, but there's so much that could be added (like a simple search). To some degree their customers are spread out over so many market segments beyond the original biking and running that they started with. Each segment has their own needs and wants. Then there's all the hardware (watches, power meters, trainers, etc..) that needs to be integrated and supported.

They're starting to run it like a business.

Most apps/startups begin as an exploration of product/market fit. They'll try a lot of different things and use analytics (even simple server-side stats) to determine what people actually use in the app. Very frequently, you discover that the things you thought your users would want are actually only used by 0.05% of your customers. Eventually you have to start shedding rarely used features and limiting free plans, even if it makes the non-paying users angry.

Truth is, it doesn't really matter if you're losing someone who spend 5 years on the free plan but refused to sign up for the paid plan. They're not converting to paid unless they're forced to, and you're not gaining any money by letting them stay on the free plan for another 5 years.

> but where are all the new and cool features that should have come out over the last few years?

Cutting rarely-used features like this one could be a sign that they're trying to free up engineering resources to ship new features.

From discussions I've had with people at Strava, they're trying to be more focused on implementing a few key features really well. When the original founders returned in 2018 or 2019, the app had a ton of features that had been half integrated, couldn't be found in order to be used, etc etc.

They paired back things that weren't working, moved to focus on revenue (as they weren't going to be able to grow into the social network for all activities like they tried).

I think it's the right strategy, but this move makes no sense. It's very easy for them to manage duplicate data, and I'm surprised to see them suggest users set-up their garmin device to connect directly to Apple. This essentially makes it easier for strava to be cut out of the loop in the future if the social aspect isn't working for you.

> And I wonder if the article is correct in that they are pivoting away from segments

That's not what DCR wrote, that part was clearly about user perception: Strava has grown into something bigger than just that app that declares you KOM when you go really fast.

There's also the reality where their client base gets older and loses interest in taking their sport as seriously. My entire cycling circle stopped regularly using Strava years ago because we just all got older and no longer had that competitive interest.

Started using it in 2019 and it only got worse, it's a shame because I really enjoy the social aspect of it since it bundles a lot of sport and gear into one place but with this trend I feel like the users will be leaving.

There is no business here that scales sadly. In fact, it gets more expensive for Strava to operate the longer you are a subscriber

And it apparently isn't valuable enough to charge more for ($5/month)

I think this can make sense. The recording devices ideally should have their own integrations with Apple Health so the source pushes to all the data repos rather than repos chaining the data along.

Wonder if this includes third party sensor data that’s tracked with Strava. Like if I use a chest strap and record into Strava, will the exported data include the sensor data or is that considered “third party”

Why not let users chose to enable/disable?

yeah strava (understandably) wants to upsell you on premium features in the app, they don’t just want to be some middleman for your Garmin app

What is the most important data (or strava features) you want to keep?

I was actually looking into this myself, and a few parts of strava are not that hard. For me the overview of my rides (including avg speed and distance is important), I quickly implemented a webpage with javascript and leaflet (map viewer), and I could present that data pretty quickly using geojson. I had an offline program which converted gpx traces to geojson, but I'm pretty sure I'm able to read gpx in javascript directly. The harder part is generating the gpx trace (which I used komoot app for), as this involves matching your trace (gps positions) on a map instead of using the data as is.

I actually spent a lot of time working on one. As usual there isn't a whole lot of special sauce that makes it impossible but its an immense amount to replicate all of the features as well as a rather expensive to run piece of software if you want something like segments and high score boards.

And after all this, your user base consists of the people who didn't want to pay for strava.

I built one for myself, sqlite + apache superset. I basically did that because over the years I had switched devices from different companies and I used to use endomondo which was shut down. I wanted to have all my data in once place. It does require me to export data from device and use my import script once a while, however works for me.

Strava has:

  * the database of "segments" created by users  
  * the leaderboard data for each segment  
  * the network-effects of being "the place to record data"

If you create a self-hosted Strava then it isn't really Strava; it's just a log of your workouts.

I’ve been working on one over at [redacted].

Progress is slow as a solo dev who contributes to it in their spare time, but I’m happy enough with it that I could archive my Strava account and switch to it fully.

Well not exactly turn key solution but you can do a lot with a self hosted elasticstack instance.

I guess you might be able to do interesting dashboards with grafana.

The author says that many of those companies have shitty apps that don’t load the data properly and strava was cleaning that up.

Honest question, is that comment meant at face value, or is it sarcastic?

My impression of Apple has been that it's a mixed-bag for privacy, etc., so I'm actually not sure.

amen

Garmin couldn't directly disable this, once Strava has your data they can do with it whatever they want, licensing permitting. Which is a segue into - while I have no specific knowledge of this case, I do think it's somewhat tricky to take data from a third party and then hand it on to another third party. Presumably all of this was mediated by the user, and user's desires should be paramount here, but it's an example of why I believe OAuth is fairly broken and what we should all be giving permission to is capabilities, not access.

Really surprising to see Strava actively avoiding the central switchboard role that would be such a powerful retention feature. I wouldn't be surprised to see it come back very soon, with some low level UX polisher receiving that talk about power and responsibility.

>> Garmin is the only one I actually trust currently, as they've shown 0 willingness to monetize your health information.

> What about the concern that the company is bought out in the future? Or that it may be sharing data already, with government agencies, etc? Or companies that it works with? > It boggles my mind, that people ... come to the judgement that its ok for corporations to have this personal data!

I'm not OP. I chose Garmin precisely because I don't think it's ok for corporations to have this personal data.

I chose Garmin because I can use it without needing to share any* of my data with a third party, including Garmin itself. I save the workout files to my computer via the same USB cable I use to charge the watch. There are various non-cloud apps I can use to view and analyze these workouts, if I actually cared to do so beyond the "fastest 5k" etc that the watch tracks automatically.

For this, it does not matter to me whether Garmin is bought out in the future because my watch works just fine as-is, and cannot update its OS without my explicit permission. I'm unsure what data Garmin would be capable of sharing because I have given it none.

* of course, speed/time/location data is obtained by pinging GPS/GLONASS satellites, but the watch can and does record my workouts quite accurately in non-GPS pedometer mode.

I prefer the corporations not have the data at all. The problem is Apple is simultaneously the best and also pretty bad at stewarding such an ecosystem. In theory all my actual health data would live on a device I own, encrypted, and accessible only by the apps I approve. In reality Apple can't or won't provide those mechanisms. Every other corporation wants to collect and sell my data.

Apple had a chance to make on-premise data storage a thing. They had AirPort, which combined with a Mac Mini could provide full iCloud functionality from the home. iCloud itself could have simply been an encrypted offsite backup, like Tarsnap with no options.

Instead Apple built a system that still puts clear user data within their reach.

As long as they don't reveal my 'hidden zone', they're welcome to the lot, and I freely give it whilst severely understanding the 'risks'. If my W/kg or bpm can be monetized, go for it. Hit me with one single ad, though, and it's goodnight Vienna.

Many people don't care about health data being monetized. I don't personally care if Strava sells my heart rate data or where I rode my bike today. I'm fine with trading them that data for their heat map, which is super useful in planning rides.

To me, it comes down to me being fine with this data being considered public. If others don't want to share it, that's totally fine and I understand their perspective. For me though? I couldn't care less.

Congrats, you sold some data that says I'm fat, out of shape, and don't like riding my bike on busy roads.

Because a log of my cycling is the least important data to me and the value it provides is immense.

It's not the size (though as mdoms explains it's more than you might think); it's the complexity of matching activities to segments at the necessary level of precision. I know what a consequential amount of data looks like, having worked on a storage system that routinely fed multiple petabytes of data to each of many analytics pipelines simultaneously. Geographic partitioning is only what gets you to millions of activities instead of billions. There's still a computational component involved in delivering those answers so quickly, and that's what I'm curious about. There might be some interesting algorithms involved. Your blithe dismissal of any part other than the one you think you understand shows that you either can't understand the whole thing or didn't bother to try.

Incredibly ignorant statement. An activity can have thousands of data points across dozens of metrics. A record of your route to 1 meter or smaller precision for a 5 hour bike ride is alone thousands of data points. Along with hundreds or thousands of time series points for heart rate, elevation, cadence, power, respiration, etc etc... Millions of activities means tracking tens of billions of data points and perhaps an order of magnitude more than that.

Doesn't that suggest that Apple is failing to detect and coalesce duplicates, like Strava and (AFAIK) other similar services like Garmin Connect or old MapMyRun do? That seems pretty damning, and also not Strava's problem.

Are any apps at all actually good for route planning especially on a bike? It seems like that this is something in software that just sucks. I don't even bother anymore, I open up a topographical map and figure out routes by hand. No more turning left across six lanes from a stop sign. No more route thats "mostly flat", aside from the 400ft of undulating terrain that saps you. No sharing the road with semitrucks that go 50mph and are actively trying to force you off and into riding on the sidewalk. No more surprises. All this planning turns things into a homework assignment, but its worth the investment for points of interest you regularly are going to.

> I greatly appreciate the "kudos" I get from others

This was once nice for me, but at some point it was obvious that many simply kudos everything.

However for a while it was quite a motivation to go, just to keep the public image of myself active. ;)