Wow, I think you nailed it. The transition would be ugly, but keeping your data private is the thing people are willing to pay for.
Live shot of the Strava Executive Teamā¦
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Yep I actually thought the same thing this morning. I think itāll kill off new users massively - although people might still jump on a free trial which still will do plenty to entice people to pay.
Uploaded the ride from my Wahoo to Garmin connect this morning to see what their segments look.
The other thought I had this morning. The only more sinister thing I could think of them doing would be to make 3rd party app access available to subscribers only. That would definitely make people pay up.
Interesting topic. I think the problem with Strava isnāt that they are trying to make money, Iād gladly pay for a good service. Itās that they spent years without any developments even for paying users, have very poor communication, have so much potential to monetize with huge user base, but somehow they always act as if theyāre suffering and need help (bad management). I feel like just changing the way they market themselves could easily fix all of this negativity.
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So itās the same price as Trainerroad? Yeah, I know which one actually delivers continual value. Iāve been a subscriber to Strava in the past and it was a stagnant platformā¦ but you know, trust us now, because now we really mean it?
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I would agree with all of that. Development has certainly kicked back up a notch since the founders came back and Iāll carry on subscribing as long as Iām finding the live segments feature useful.
I look at both. Strava changes distance and elevation for some reason.
Not wanting to wade too deep into this one, but for what itās worth anyone. I am a subscriber to Strava, so not likely to notice any significant change. What I do think is an issue is that it will devalue the leaderboards, if most people arenāt able to look at their position. For some segments 200 of 2000 would be impressive. This competition in Strava is inherent and Iād say it must be at least a significant majority who have some point or another cared about a time in relation to someone else. So itās a shame that this fundamental feature, which relies on volumes of people, will need to be paid for.
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dont you all compare your Garmin VO2 max? I know we all do 
nothing like comparing made up estimates for fun 
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What? No. Strava is 59/yr annually (5/mo), or 59/15 months (3.93/mo) on BFCM. Itās not expensive, if you use it. Grandfathered TrainerRoad is $99/yr at best.
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Righto. 60% of Trainerroad. Doubt my view is any different. Itās not expensive, but you wouldāve thought they wouldāve monetised their product by other means by now. I doubt subscribers are going to solve their issues - Iāve been a subscriber and got value from it, until Trainerroad brought out their calendar 
Honest question: Did it really or did they re-enable features that were disabled or shut down?
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So honest question and not incting an argument, genuinely interestedā¦why do you think Strava should do this for free? Everything on that site will need some form of development to make it happen. All of which has cost Strava money to build. Iām interested in why people feel that companies should give away their product for free.
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Well I hope you and others who have enjoyed it but question the 3-5$/mo value still stick around on there. Itās become so valuable this year with Covid outbreaks being predicted to come and go around the world for the foreseeable future. I donāt actively use Facebook, I donāt really post/comment much on Instagram, but I like to interact with locals and friends on their rides on strava and if a large number of people DELETE it really does suck for the community and just continue to fragment us. Thereās people Iāve ridden an event with once that still stay in touch with me on strava whereas we otherwise wouldāve maybe friended on other social media but never really talked again, because the guaranteed common thread we share at the time is that ride and we can still relate to it even if we never meet again in person or dislike everything else about their life if we also were seeing their political, religious, whatever non-sports posts on IG etc.
Strava is still functional for free for what it is best at, and you can still use as a slightly curated public-facing view of your activities to can share around to present different aspects of the ride to people interested in your ride be it photos (family, friends), comments (Rivals and buddies), or the data (apps, flexing, whatever)
seriously tho, the black Friday saleā¦
They did say there will be a ānewā way of competing on segments coming soon. So this may cover some of that. For me whilst there is value in comparing myself to my riding buddies, the real value I derive is comparing myself to myself. Strava makes that easy to do. Plus live segments helps too.
IMO, large numbers wonāt. Theyāll moan, theyāll complain but theyāll sign up or continue using the free version. A lot and I mean a lot of people think about kudos, comments and how their ride will look on Strava when riding. I had a friend who gave up Strava for a few months. He practically almost gave up cycling during that time.
Strava is a social media platform. Serious cyclists would be the ones most likely to live without it. But the casual cyclist who like the social aspect of Strava will sign up. Subscriptions will soar.
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Because users already pay in some fashion by letting them use and resell their data. Clearly Strava havenāt found a way to monetise it successfully enough but itās not like they arenāt getting anything out of their relationship with non-paying members.
The first example I can think of is finally enabling tracking of historical FTP values. Thatās something thatās been requested for years now.
oh come on. We give away our data freely to many many organisations quite willingly. Supermarkets spring to mind but you donāt expect groceries for free? And they arenāt stopping a free service. Just restricting the features.
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Donāt think anybody is really saying thatā¦or at least very few actually are.
What people ARE saying is that Strava set out the arrangement for their usersā¦and now, after failing to find ways to offer features that people actually want and would pay for, they are taking away features that were part of the original agreement.
While that is certainly their right, and they absolutely deserve to be able to make money from their product, their tactics in achieving that goal is leaving a bad taste in peopleās mouths.
As I noted, had they just done analytic features that used the same measurement values and numbers as the world was used to using (TSS, etc), I would have gladly demoted Training Peaks for the sake of having everything under one roofā¦but their āanalysisā tools were horrific and attempted to introduce new metrics into a world of largely-accepted standards.
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