If Strava is as terrible as you say, how did they manage to dwarf their competitors and become the default social training ap of cycling?
I’m reminded of Yogi Berra saying “Nobody goes to that restaurant , because its too crowded.”
Who are their competitors and on what features do they compete?
A major part of Strava’s revenue stream is selling their data to urban planners, municipalities, and other customer (through their Metro program) , as we are always hear, TR has the data to prove x … well Strava have a lot of data that planers e.t.c would find interesting, and will to pay the $20,000 per year it costs
Charging users would hit this revenue stream if they started to leave, it’s also worth noting that Strava is very protective of this data (it’s why Hammerhead could not use it there heat map routue planning) and it’s not personnal data that they sell, more route usage e.t.c
Edited to remove the miss mention / association to AJS914
Ride with GPS, Map My Ride, Cyclemeter, et al
Of course, if you don’t like Strava, its a free market. You’re welcome to use one of the others, none at all, or write your own. C’est la velo.
Komoot , Sweatcoin also uses fund my selling their cumalative data to platform to urban planners and municipalities in the same way that Strava Metro does, so I would consider them competitors
I like statshunters Get more out of your Strava activities with heatmap, statistics, badges and more... for the yearly comparing with other years…
None of those are competitors with Strava IMHO.
Strava is Facebook
Really? At the most basic level, they’re all identical. They track your rides, allow you to share your rides, allow you to follow others, provide a forum to discuss rides, and have mapping/planning/training features. They all have ranked segments and challenges. While they implement the features differently, the basic function is the same.
If memory serves, I believe the apps I listed predated Strava, and initially the primary difference was that Strava came in with more aggressive marketing and targeted competitive cyclists.
But like Compuserve, AOL, MySpace, and Facebook, the difference is primarily marketing and implementation, at least up to the point Strava took on a larger market share than the others. Now part of its appeal is that everyone else is there.
Interesting. I’ve never seen anyone post a ride or have a discussion about it on MMR or RWGPS. I see those as purely mapping apps.
I think they basically started as mapping apps and then a tempered to compete with Strava by adding similar features such as segments, etc. Garmin Connect later added these features as well.
So while they may technically be competitors, they are all so distant from Strava in terms of reach / share that they are almost inconsequential IMO
I’ve heard more than one person say they don’t do Facebook, they do Strava!
They still have users, and at perform a similar function. They just don’t have the user base Strava has.
Who is making this claim? I didn’t see anyone here make it (although I admittedly didn’t read each post with great attention).
Definitely not me. I’m kind of saying the opposite.
Major??? Please provide any data you have on revenue. My guess is that it’s a drop in the bucket.
Also, that has nothing to do with “my argument”. My only argument was that Strava could have been a great “small” business ($50M, $100M, whatever) and provided great features to subscribers without bugs. Instead, they got VC money and those guys want a Billion dollar exit. They keep taking away and trying to nudge more people to join. And it has never worked.
My only other argument was that “it’s only $5 per month” isn’t an argument for why someone should give a corporation money. If you like their features, then subscribe. I really don’t care. Just don’t subscribe because they ask. Like Cyclingtips/Outside (more VC money) asking people to join like they were public radio.
And to the subscribers who are going to get all ruffled by my post, please don’t. We are discussing a privately held company owned by venture capitalists. If you like paying for Premium, then by all means continue to do so. Everyone here is free to discuss the moves of these companies we all deal with (Strava, Garmin, Wahoo, Pton, etc).
Sorry, I should not have mentioned you’re name when talking about metro, I just meant it it wasn’t in you funding post,
According to Strava the number of companies using metro has grown from 50 to 1500 , @ $20,000 a year = $30,000,000 (Sorry about the fag packet math, but this revenue stream is not insignificant for Strava)
It’s great for Strava and right in line with them being what I described as a small/medium sized business and not a mutlti-billion dollar company like a Garmin.
I edited the original post to remove your name, was invorrect thing to do, sorry
Here’s yesterday’s gravel ride: MapMyRide
As you can see, they all offer similar info and the opportunity to comment and share.
FWIW, I set up my Garmin to upload to all three apps. I’m primarily a Strava user, but I still have friends on the other apps who occasionally comment or post their own rides and routes.