Ok well not Strava itself, but organisations that have Strava Clubs will now be able to post content directly into your daily feed. Cue web content providers posting up links to their latest articles to get that click-through advertising revenue.

road.cc article (and i do see the irony of using this site as the source of the info)

We know STW does this on Facebook and twitter, we had Mark explain the hows and whys, is this the next storm-in-a-teacup?

How many of you will be ditching brand or organisation community ‘clubs’ once they owners realise the monetary value they have and start posting advertising in your strava feed? Do you even care? Do already wade through more adverts than content everywhere else?

How long before Strava is bought by FB or Google?

I’d be less inclined to spend time on the app. It was refreshing to not have too many adverts in there.

Though I’m already using it less because of the new algorithm, I don’t care about what people did ten days ago. I want the old format back where I can see what people did on the shitty/great weather day and I don’t want to go searching through something that looks like its in a random order

I’ve only one organisation based club that I’m a member of – I’m only in 4 clubs anyway. If adverts appear then I’ll ditch them along with an email stating why.

Just another reason not to renew premium.
And yes i’ll be ditching clubs that spam my feed.

They seem to have forgotten that they are primarily an exercise tracking service and there’s 100’s of improvements they could make there before expanding into facebook lite.

I think you’re taking a pessimistic view of what could be a good idea and provide a useful experience.

Yes I agree some will use it as a way of driving traffic to content of negligible interest to “members”, but do people really join brand Strava clubs? (genuine question)

Are you saying you think local cycling clubs will start shilling content for a few pence in click-through referrals?

Pretty sure they’ll quickly develop an algorithm that analyses your Strava rides and targets me with appropriate adverts for chocolate biscuits, asthma inhalers and duvets.

I just make do with charging $1.50 to people who want to follow me

Strava, a great way to ruin a good ride.

chakaping – Member
I think you’re taking a pessimistic view of what could be a good idea and provide a useful experience.

Yes I agree some will use it as a way of driving traffic to content of negligible interest to “members”, but do people really join brand Strava clubs? (genuine question)

Are you saying you think local cycling clubs will start shilling content for a few pence in click-through referrals?

No i think local clubs will be ok, infact as you say if they are run by good people it will be great. Im in a few local clubs and know they will only be used appropriately to promote club events.

Maybe i misgudged how many people are members of brand, organisation or website ‘clubs’. But it was these that i was focusing on.

Road.cc has 3000 members.
GCN 43,000
Rapha only 5000, surprising!

if strava bothers you that much, strava isn’t the problem. 🙄

Quite a few cafes around us have Strava clubs. Don’t know how many members they have as I’ve never bothered checking.

Great, I can spam the STW Zwifters club now with my adverts 8)

They seem to have forgotten that they are primarily an exercise tracking service and there’s 100’s of improvements they could make there before expanding into facebook lite.

I disagree, Strava is a business not a ‘service’, and I’m pretty sure they’ve always claimed to be a “Social Network” but obviously coming at it from the sports tracking angle…

They certainly weren’t the first to get into sports tracking, but they seem to have stuck it out and become the most popular/ubiquitous.

As a business (with presumably evil, greedy investors to satisfy) they were always going to have to monetise the thing, and they’re 10 years down the line so it was probably now or never.

Plus they’ve done other stuff (merchandise, selling detailed heat maps to Local Government and businesses, etc), but they had to build a large enough user base, and a bit of ‘brand loyalty’ before they started pushing advertising, there’s obviously a ‘critical mass’ at which point they can start the whole targeted messages/spam/advertising and they must be getting there…

I’d be interested to know if there’s a subscription option that gets rid of targeted messages/advertising…

Cards on the table I think Strava is brilliant, and if I ever met the inventors I’d buy them a pint (because lets face it I’m never going premium 😉

However, if, like me, you use it for free its worth remembering the expression “If you aren’t a customer, then you must be the product”.

Rob

I’d be interested to know if there’s a subscription option that gets rid of targeted messages/advertising…

Its not targeted, well sort of. Its ‘messages’ from groups you are in, so if you are in clubs then when they post messages, be it next weeks social ride or 2for1 offer on Muck-off, it will be in your home page feed. So its opt in, dont like it opt out (leave that group). A few strava clubs associated with content-providers already get regular articles or such in the posts section, inamongst any posts by club members, this change is just allowing them to push that content into the feed of club members, rather than it just being on a back page a lot of people dont go to.

Im quite surprised STW doesnt have a Strava club actually. Well there is one but its owned by Njee, think you might be in for a few ££ ‘management fee’ once STW realise that missed marketing opportuinty 😆

you might be in for a few ££ ‘management fee’

You mean a bobble hat and a hip flask?

nickc – Member 
How long before Strava is bought by FB or Google?

Maybe then they’ll acknowledge the existence of mountain bikes. Not sure FB or Google care any more for them though.

I have always been surprised that there aren’t adverts in the free version. In fact it is one of the only apps I can think of that doesn’t use ads?

@hooli – does surprise me that though I run a certain add-on anyway. Maybe when this gets rolled out standard users will start getting ads.

FB or Google are only likely to buy Strava if they feel they can make money from it.

Edit: Wikipedia gives no capitalisation value on Strava.

Why would you join a Strava club? I really don’t get it. I once saw merlin advertise a Strava club and unless it gives me a discount I can not understand why you would join.

FB already get data for free everytime someone shares their Strava ride on FB. The shares are more than just a link if you’ve connected Strava & FB. Hooks into FB’s activity profile data, then they’re finding out where people are. Can target ads from that.

Other question is how Relive will get monetised. Fascinating, but they can’t keep it running unless there’s money involved.

Talking of using data, Strava is being more actively used not just for statistics and profiles, but by land owners to track usage. All for free at the moment.

Strava’s premium service I just can’t pay for until they fix the tonnes of things people have been screaming out for ages for. Just on my wishlist – MTB as an activity, MTB challenges, filtering MTB/road efforts on challenges and leaderboards, C temp with miles distance, sharing private rides, private clubs where only members can see the rides and they don’t appear on public leaderboards, ability to unmatch a segment without having to request that via support, segment management/ownership like Trailforks…

… actually Trailforks is becoming what I want. Except it’s got an issue where landowners and walkers/NIMBYs are marking segments as sensitive and it will then hide the entire ride just because you rode that one segment or it matched you against it. All my rides in Surrey Hills and even Swinley are now hidden because of sensitive trails.

Just on my wishlist – MTB as an activity, MTB challenges, filtering MTB/road efforts on challenges and leaderboards, C temp with miles distance, sharing private rides, private clubs where only members can see the rides and they don’t appear on public leaderboards, ability to unmatch a segment without having to request that via support, segment management/ownership like Trailforks…

All of the above plus:
Ability to manually add sufferscore to activities where there is a problem with HR data (to keep the fitness/freshness chart accurate)
Ability to upload photos from the website
Make the @ tagging in comments work on website
Allow me to filter rides by bike
Allow me to have a more detailed breakdown of yearly stats (MTB/Road split, how many miles on bike X, average speed by bike etc etc)
Add ride analysis features from website to apps

Could go on forever, and indeed they have a suggestions forum which they largely ignore that is FULL of good ideas.

Agree with pretty much all of those deadkenny.

Add in the “matched run” feature on Strava running but not cycling. A lot of people have asked for this in cycling but it hasn’t appeared.

On that note, there are a fair few differences between the running and cycling activities. It is almost like the 2 parts of the app have been developed by separate teams with no insight into what the other team are working on.

Other question is how Relive will get monetised. Fascinating, but they can’t keep it running unless there’s money involved.

Why would anyone WANT to.

C temp with miles distance

If you want good old British measurements, stick with em 🙂

damascus – Member
Why would you join a Strava club? I really don’t get it. I once saw merlin advertise a Strava club and unless it gives me a discount I can not understand why you would join.

Because people are peculiar and like clicking on things.

fifeandy – Member 
Ability to upload photos from the website

Forgot that one, yes!

Extra annoying having Windows Phone as no app so can’t upload from the phone. Even then sometimes I want to upload a photo that isn’t on the phone.

Workaround at the moment is using an Android emulator!

Or try to remember to upload to Instacrap during the ride and it might sync them.

atlaz – Member 
If you want good old British measurements, stick with em

70s child I’m brought up part Euro, part Brit. I like my temps in C, distances in miles, elevation in ft, body weight in stones, but food weight in g/kg and beer in pints 😀

But if I pick miles, I get Fahrenheit for temp!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit#/media/File:Countries_that_use_Fahrenheit.svg

… and the ability to block certain activities such as taking a walk with the wife/kids/dog and daily commutes to work.

Blocking Zwift in my feed is another. I don’t care that you looked out the window, saw it was raining and so did a fake ride in the garage 😛

(though I don’t get some of the people I follow who are doing Zwift rides on perfectly nice dry and sunny days!)

Agree with the previous two posts, plus I don’t care what poxy challenges people have signed up to or how close they are to ‘completing’ them.

However I’d swap all new features just to have the chronological feed back!

.though I don’t get some of the people I follow who are doing Zwift rides on perfectly nice dry and sunny days

Time, convenience and training style.

Its hard to ride outside and replicate a race where you’re at 90% of you max hr for a full hour.

Blocking Zwift in my feed is another

I was gonna suggest that you were a bit of a picky customer, but I can get on board with this one myself.

Are you a premium member BTW?

Have a look here if you use chrome browser:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/strava-enhancement-suite/egelalffpmicecakegglddmhlbdiemlg?hl=en-GB

It does allow you to block some activities but obviously only when on a PC and not the app.

Yeah I’d like people to be able to block my mundane activities. I’m not too bothered about them myself, but there should definitely be criteria for it.

And while I’m at it, an accuracy level for segments – off road there can be one or two trails nearby that would conceivably be the width of a road apart plus a bit of error, and it’d be nice to be able to only get people that have ridden one of them on a segment. I mean it doens’t matter, it’s only Strava, but it would be nice.

Though I’m already using it less because of the new algorithm, I don’t care about what people did ten days ago.

no idea what this is about… my feed is just everyone’s (my & followers) activities, in order, just like always!

Whats that STW users in a web costs money shocker 😉

Monitisation is the aftertaste of the free times we have all been enjoying. The current state of the web is the equivilent of wandering into a posh restaurant ignoring the menu/prices and now the bill is here. Everyone was really happy when it was all free, plenty of investors have seen their money evaporate in various web ventures so no it’s time to redress that.

Personally I pay for premium and it’s been nice to have, sent in some improvement requests etc.

Looking through my feed in the browser it all appears in chronological order here so no idea where the new algorithm is being implemented.

chakaping – Member 
Are you a premium member BTW?

No. Have no need as I don’t race and don’t “train” for anything, so most of the premium features aren’t much use to me. I just ride for fun, to explore and enjoy the countryside. Only thing of interest with premium is syncing Strava segments with Garmin, but to be honest the Garmin is there to be turned on to track the ride and then ignore it other than to check the time or when sunset is.

Though I’m already using it less because of the new algorithm, I don’t care about what people did ten days ago.

no idea what this is about… my feed is just everyone’s (my & followers) activities, in order, just like always![/quote]

It’s changed back. I’m sure for a little time at least that the order you saw them was based on the amount of kudos the activity had and how many comments it had.

It was like this for a little bit;

See the Best Posts Every Time You Visit

I feel a bit guilty – I use Strava a lot, but have never paid them a penny. I’d be quite happy to pay something, but the premium rate is too much given how little of the extra functionality I used

Veloviewer on the other hand, is an absolute bargain at £10 a year