[HN Gopher] Strava cuts off leaderboard for free users, reduces ...
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Strava cuts off leaderboard for free users, reduces third party
apps
Author : kylebarron
Score : 61 points
Date : 2020-05-18 21:11 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dcrainmaker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dcrainmaker.com)
| markus92 wrote:
| Cyclists are going to revolt, everyone wants to beat their
| friends on their favorite hill. It was one of the features I
| loved most about the app as I could see myself improving compared
| to people I have a good reference to.
| dionidium wrote:
| 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.
| HugoDias wrote:
| Well, I started using Strava last week as a free user. Any good
| alternatives for bikers?
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| I think Ride With GPS is generally liked.
| lizhang wrote:
| Couchsurfing last week, Strava today... reckoning has arrived?
| monkmartinez wrote:
| Garmin Connect could win here.
| alteria wrote:
| This is pretty disappointing. Recently Strava seemed to be
| turning the corner, releasing new features that users wanted.
|
| Totally understand their need to make money, seeing that they've
| raised 5 rounds from VC.
|
| However, burning goodwill like this is super counterproductive.
| After all, most of my riding is on Zwift, I could also switch to
| Garmin, etc.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| well, it was mildly amusing while it lasted.
|
| See you all on ridewithgps where all the brevet cue sheets are
| cross-posted first anyway.
| heynk wrote:
| As a non-paying user, this seems to be mostly fair. I used to do
| pretty remote trail running, and the route building feature was
| great for putting together a route and exporting it to my watch.
| If I get back into that type of running, then I'd probably be
| willing to pay just for that feature.
|
| Hiding the "friends only" leaderboard seems like a bad idea on
| their part. That feature definitely drove engagement and friendly
| rivalries. It's not the same if it's only amongst your paid
| subscriber friends, which is not many.
|
| I appreciate them doing more to get users to pay. I've never paid
| for Strava, despite having been a very active user in the past. I
| generally like them as a network, and wouldn't want them to go
| away.
|
| The immediately breaking API changes are pretty bad. I wonder
| what the impetus was behind that move. Too complicated to have it
| act as a transition? Maybe they could have announced these
| changes, but have them start in 30 days, with a small discount
| for users if you subscribe before then.
| coronadisaster wrote:
| Why don't you use something like gpx logger ?
| floatingatoll wrote:
| This is a great example of why it's important to charge money for
| things up front, rather than later on. If they'd charged for
| these features from day 1, this could have been a glowing article
| about how their revenue model has helped them support feature
| development and build a third-party app ecosystem. They should
| have charged for it sooner.
| appleiigs wrote:
| But i don't think they'd be as popular without being free. I
| have a Garmin watch which has an app, iPhone has fitness
| tracking built in. Nike has a free app. The list of competitors
| goes on and on.
|
| Now that they have network effects and switching costs (all my
| historical data), time to squeeze and monetize.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Given the nearly universally hostile comments about "squeeze
| and monetize", I wonder if that approach is finally winding
| down. Sure would be amazing if YC refused to fund anyone who
| didn't charge money from day one. "If your idea isn't worth
| charging for, it isn't worth funding for."
| harikb wrote:
| For what it is worth, Nike Run Club app along with all premium
| features is now free, at least for a few months while this
| pandemic is going on
| dewey wrote:
| Nike Run Club does something really annoying which is that they
| keep the GPS locations in their app and there's no way to get
| it out. They could easily give it back to HealthKit (on iOS at
| least) like all the other workout apps but they decided to lock
| people in that way.
|
| As far as I know then you can't use the location on Strava.
| mrosett wrote:
| I'd been wondering why runs recorded with NRC don't have GPS
| data in healthkit. That's really disappointing, since I love
| the app overall. The guided runs with Coach Bennett in
| particular are great.
| dewey wrote:
| Yes, that's also my main reason to use it. I really like
| the guided runs too.
|
| My workaround is to remove the HealthKit permissions from
| NRC and use the iOS Workouts app in parallel. So before the
| run I start both apps, but only one is writing into
| HealthKit. It feels a bit silly but it works.
| abalashov wrote:
| I don't much care about these changes one way or another, but it
| would be very sad if they went away. For better or worse, they
| created far and away the best fitness platform for cyclists, if
| only because of the mindshare and network effects. Their analyses
| are also quite good. It would be a real pity if they went away,
| and I hope they stay solvent.
|
| I've been a paying subscriber since I first joined in Aug 2018
| and am happy to support it.
| nradov wrote:
| Strava does pretty well as a social network. But their
| analytics are generally weaker than TrainingPeaks or Garmin
| Connect.
| winkeyless wrote:
| As a cyclist and DAU I haven't been a paying user for the past
| few years. Just subscribed today. This application costs a lot
| to run and it's been mostly ads-free unlike Instagram. Pay if
| you can. Nothing comes free.
| lykahb wrote:
| Their front page tells nearly nothing about the app. Instead, one
| half of it solicits registration. This tells me all I need to
| know about their respect to the users.
| lincolnq wrote:
| With Strava, you record your workouts (run, bike etc) and it
| will show you where you went, how far and how fast. Then it
| finds commonly-run "segments" within your ride, and ranks you
| on those segments against your friends and the world, so you
| can see yourself improving over time and compare your speed to
| others.
| MiroF wrote:
| something something book something something cover
| freehunter wrote:
| I'm looking at their front page right now and I see "
| Connecting the world's athletes" which sounds like a social
| network for athletes?
|
| Scrolling the tiniest bit but still without changing pages
| pages, I see "If you're active, Strava was made for you. We're
| the social network for those who strive" and it shows a map and
| details of someone's workout.
|
| That tells me everything I need to know. It's a social media
| app to track your workouts and compare them with other people.
| lykahb wrote:
| The only text the front page displays is "The #1 app for
| runners and cyclists", on top of a screenshot and
| registration dividing the screen in two. Might be A/B testing
| going on.
| andromeduck wrote:
| Strava integration with apple watch and apple health is so poor I
| stopped using it directly, relying instead of stuff like health
| fit. Having tried Summit I honestly don't understand why anyone
| would pay for such a lackluster experience especially for
| swimming.
|
| If the Activity app would allow for a bit more detailed workout
| sharing and basic social like likes and comments I'd be done with
| it entirely.
| kingosticks wrote:
| Giving zero days notice to your 3rd-party developers is one way
| to anger a relatively powerful bunch of your users. Many people
| will find today that their hobby/side-project is now dead in the
| water. I hope nobody was relying on any income from software
| using these APIs. But the 'best' bit:
|
| "We realize these changes could be especially challenging for
| some of you, so they'll be non-breaking for 30 days, returning
| empty data during that time so you can make necessary
| adjustments"
|
| What on earth is non-breaking about this? I have not enjoyed
| working with the Strava API myself but thankfully I have not
| wasted as much time as some poor devs. The thing is a total mess
| as it is, parts of the API were effectively crippled beyond use
| following some bizarre privacy-based change some time ago.
|
| Get your act together Strava.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Giving zero days notice to your 3rd-party developers is one
| way to anger a relatively powerful bunch of your users.
|
| I understand the frustration, but I also understand Strava's
| desire to rip the band-aid off and just shut it down.
|
| When it comes to free APIs, a sunsetting period gives a lot of
| people the idea that they can change the company's mind if they
| complain loudly enough, make enough noise on social media, or
| threaten boycotts and other punishments for the company.
| Ironically, the longer the sunset period, the angrier people
| get.
|
| Also, I'm not convinced the 3rd-party API consumers are
| particularly powerful in this case. Strava is obviously
| focusing on profitability, so removing access to a free feature
| that appears in other company's apps isn't likely to make much
| difference to the company.
|
| Their plan sounds like exactly what they need to do: Focus on
| building a core product that people will feel the need to pay
| for. Giving 90% of the value proposition away for free,
| including letting it show up in 3rd-party apps, isn't a great
| path to profitability unless they have another 10% of extremely
| valuable paid add-on content. As a Strava user, I've never felt
| compelled to upgrade because all of the functionality I
| actually wanted was free.
| kingosticks wrote:
| 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 Strava needs to change. Their
| strategy has been non-existent for years. I was a paid
| subscriber for around 2 years. In that time I dutifully
| (naively) submitted bug reports and feature requests since I
| wasn't really getting much use out of the premium features
| but I wanted to support it. However, I never saw any value in
| the few changes they made so I figured my support was
| misplaced. I've been a happy free user ever since. I use
| their platform as a way bring together my data that's spread
| across 9 years and various Garmin, Wahoo and TomTom devices.
| I put quite a lot of value in that data and I trust Strava
| with it all. I definitely trust them less now. I think they
| could have handled this a lot better.
| jhrmnn wrote:
| 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.
| nradov wrote:
| You can do a bulk download of FIT files directly from
| Garmin devices using a USB cable but eventually older
| activities get purged. There is an API for Garmin Connect
| which you could use for bulk download but it isn't really
| open. You have to sign a license agreement with Garmin
| and adhere to particular terms.
| crisnoble wrote:
| The API changes impact 3rd party apps that deal with segment
| and segment leaderboard data. That is not trivial and surely
| the reason many people use veloviewer. Seems as though 3rd
| party apps focused on aggregate stats and exploration
| (statshunters, wandrer.earth, veloviewer's explorer tiles
| feature) will not be impacted afaict. When I first read the
| post, my heart sank as these 3rd party exploration layers have
| given me a whole new reason to ride.
| czbond wrote:
| I am not sure the current state, but they were looking for a
| CTO in ~2019 for what seemed like a very long time. Current CTO
| specializes in ML, so maybe current team isn't really aware of
| working in the real universe of large applications w/ partners
| and partner communication. (Conjecture)
|
| BC ML background is mostly data driven, internally focused
| fredley wrote:
| I think this is fair. Strava summit is a cheap subscription, and
| running a very cheap sport to participate in. Segments in my
| experience appeal to spreadsheet heads who get a kick out of
| meaningless drilling down into data[0]. I imagine most casual
| runners are not that.
|
| In many ways I can see this making Strava _more_ appealing to
| casual runners, as for people starting out on a fitness journey,
| the last thing you want to see is how much slower you are than
| other people.
|
| 0: https://twitter.com/stravawankers
| markus92 wrote:
| Afaik Strava is more used by cyclists which is a more expensive
| sport. Everyone who is sort of serious uses it.
| notatoad wrote:
| it definitely started out cycling-focused, and i'd say a
| higher portion of cyclists use strava. but i'd be willing to
| bet there are more runners than cyclists using it as an
| absolute number - the running market is _huge_ compared to
| just about any other sport, so even a relatively small
| portion of runners can account for more users than every
| single sort-of-serious cyclist.
| fredley wrote:
| Here in the UK at least it's very popular with the running
| community, although I remember a few years ago it was
| definitely cycling-first. Would be interesting to know what
| the breakdown is by activities, users' primary activity type.
| alteria wrote:
| Interesting take, and it does track with my experience as a
| data nerd. Also, my first time looking at myself on the
| leaderboards was throughly depressing
| chihuahua wrote:
| Over the past 5 years, Strava has aquired the reputation of not
| fixing any bugs and not adding any useful features. Instead there
| was just a little bit of churn in the UI, annoying most users. A
| better way forward might have been to keep existing features for
| everyone, but add a number of useful new features for paying
| subscribers.
| ancorevard wrote:
| I can attest to this. A HealthKit duplication bug (all your
| rides got duplicated in Apple Health app) was lingering with
| Strava for over 2 years. A large group of people interacted
| with their support/engineering to fix it, nothing came out of
| it, people left.
| nradov wrote:
| I would be happy to subscribe if Strava would just add support
| for triathlon activities. They've been promising that literally
| for _years_ with zero progress.
| davidw wrote:
| I think the route builder is better in https://ridewithgps.com/ -
| and it seems to work better with my Wahoo Elemnt Bolt
| chihuahua wrote:
| There was a topic/thread in the Strava support forum about
| routes exported from Strava to Wahoo Elemnt missing all turn
| directions (for both paying and free users). The thread kept
| going for years with over 1000 responses. Every one of them
| said "I need turn directions, it works for Garmin but not
| Wahoo, please fix". Strava ignored it completely, no response.
| davidw wrote:
| Yeah, that's exactly what I noticed. I mean I could make do
| with it because I could switch it over to the map to see, but
| it's kind of nice to not have to do that.
|
| Also, went on a long ride which ended up longer 10 days ago
| because the Strava one routed me onto some motorcycle trails
| on my gravel bike. I should have double checked, and I got to
| see a lava cave, so it was all good, but I'm going to stick
| with Ride With GPS for now.
| nradov wrote:
| As a long time Strava it's obvious they have a tiny
| engineering team. They do a good job of keeping the lights on
| but have little ability to ship new features other than paid
| partner integrations.
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