Honestly, I’m not so sure. Speaking only for myself obviously, but my other social media accounts are way more lively and have more friends than on Strava, so if TR/Zwift/whatever give me a nice pretty image of my completed activity and some stats that I can share I’d be more than happy to post that to Instagram or Bluesky instead of Strava. If they kill their third-party ecosystem, I really don’t think they have that much of a moat left.
(Segments I could see as not being as easily replaceable as their activity feed, but I also don’t think it’s out of the question that someone else comes along and builds a competitor.)
Ridewithgps has added segments. I’ve only noticed a few times when rides sync it notifies me of some segment I completed and where I rank. It’s still very basic. But ridewithgps has slowly been adding more features like segments and they sync more activity types. I wouldnt say it’s so much a Strava competitor on the social stuff but they’re adding more and more.
I’ve been a premium member since 2015 and I just cancelled. Frankly, the data aggregation was the best feature for me.
I was in the yearly plan, so my account is still active until March. If they back track, I will renew.
I hope that my cancellation sends a signal. Of course, not mine alone. But I’m hoping others will as well.
I only use TrainerRoad indoors on their app so if anything this is a reason for me to stop using Strava. I didn’t have a subscription in the first place and their tracking of other sports isn’t even that great. I find it crazy that Strava is going down this route when uploading files to various platforms isn’t unique to them. It’s just easier to pull from Strava since everyone already uploads to it. I hope this causes the other companies to update their platforms to support uploading from other devices/wearables.
Additionally, I hope that this pushes TrainerRoad to have full Apple Health/Fitness support. I know Apple isn’t the easiest company to develop for, especially when you’re asking to access user health data, but there are other apps that already have that ability. The app I use for outdoor rides (Cadence) is able to pull my live heart rate data from my Apple Watch (with their companion app), and then upload the ride directly to the Apple Fitness app and Strava simultaneously. I do believe that TR allows you to push outdoor workouts to the Apple Watch Workouts app as it is, so they may be part way there. I track my non cycling workouts with my apple watch as well, so being able to have that automatically sync with TrainerRoad along with my weight would be awesome
Premium since 2011. I just stopped my auto renew. I think the social aspect and a central leaderboard for segments are going to be the biggest challenges to find replacements for… but hey, maybe someone can start a new cycling page on Geocities.
This is such a great point. So many segments are ruined by cheaters and they just let them stay up even though they’re obviously e-bikes/ shuttles. Hopefully the angst keeps building and we get better integration from companies that actually care about sport and see the users as a valuable resource as opposed to data.
In a statement sent to The Verge, Strava VP of Communications and Social Impact Brian Bell said, “We anticipate that these changes will affect only a small fraction (less than .1 percent) of the applications on the Strava platform–the overwhelming majority of existing use cases are still allowed, including coaching platforms focused on providing feedback to users and tools that help users understand their data and performance.”
How many users on that “less than .1%” of affected apps, though?
Ugh… this is so annoying to the core. Releasing this statement going into December when 30-50% of most development teams are likely on a holiday at any given week is a giant “up yours” to partners.
Furthermore I have even less confidence that Strava can innovate past what they have in the coaching, training prescription or data visualization. Their company size and track record doesn’t support a roll out like that.
So that leaves them as the ‘great’ social sport data aggregator that consistently ruins partner relationships and pisses off their users without any value or obvious ambition to create positive change in the market. Great time to cancel my subscription
I think Strava are being stupid, but at the same time alot of these apps are very exposed and should have been protecting themselves much earlier.
I remember the time GP Lama was flagged and blocked out of Youtube for an erroneous reason and he had a very public plea to get reinstated. It made me think thats a very precarious business to be in, that your income stream and distribution channel can literally be turned off with a switch. It’s the YouTube audience, not the GP Lama audience…
For Trainerroad and others to be reliant on a non-binding agreement with a different App seems a weak point in the business case. If you were valuing TR to purchase it, you would definitely flag that as an investor concern…
I think in the medium term this is a good thing for all independent apps, take control of your own destiny (and data distribution)
RideWithGPS has had segments for as long as Ive used it (since circa 2009). Its got better analysis of segments (particularly your own attempts), better analysis of rides and routes too IMO. The only drawback is its not as popular. IMO a lot of stuff that strava has done on the route/ segment/ ride analysis side has been copied from RWGPS.
Makes me wonder if Training Peaks buying indievelo was in part a way to ensure that they were the originator for at least some of the data they store?
TrainerRoad aren’t quite as exposed as others as they have a ton or data generated from their app and the connection to Garmin is well established. There is an argument that Garmin could do the same thing though - unlikely given that they are the ones that opened up the fit file standard to begin with.
