What's with all the complaints about Strava not giving it for free?

The main advantage Strava had for me over say, garminconnect was it's previous excellent graphic presentation of training, which they had to f*** with and is now essentially useless to me. I wouldn't continue as a free service much less as paid.

DC rainmaker said it best.

Without the "free" subscribers no one would know who or what Strava is. They built their company based on the free model and the users provided a lot of valuable data to Strava other the years to make the company what it is.

For example, Hot Routes they have access to millions of people's activities to create them instead of a few hundred .

the idea that Strava was a benevolent company is a joke. They also got busted a few years ago for revealing U.S.S troop information.

fire back heat is on wrote:

A lot of runners are broke college aged or high school students and do not understand the freedom of capitalistic society to charge and purchase whatever they desire. In other words, they are entitled broke and spoiled brats who like to complain.

I would argue that these people are consumers acting on the information available to them, from the perspective that life has afforded them. In other words, they're people Strava would need to understand, in order to extract money. Strava has failed to communicate its value to them. Strava has failed, not the consumers.

Or put another way, these people you call entitled broke and spoiled brats (spoiled AND broke!). They are the people Strava depends on. Strava has a consumer problem. Scream at the consumers all you want. They're cows in the pasture, and Strava is the idiot farmer who can't seem to get the cows where he wants them to go. Stop trying to convince the cows how grateful they should be to get milked. When the farmer's investor asks him why there isn't enough milk, is he really gonna blame the cows?

rekrunner wrote:

It's a little bit bigger problem than not "giving it away for free".

There were a lot of 3rd party apps built around Strava, which are effectively broken now with essentially no advance notice to most 3rd party developers.

The history of technology is littered with third-party developers being stunned when the free access upon which they built their products is suddenly revoked.

If your product relies on the free use of someone else's data, you don't have a product.

this is an old story wrote:

If your product relies on the free use of someone else's data, you don't have a product.

uh oh someone tell mapbox!

In wrote:

this is an old story wrote:

If your product relies on the free use of someone else's data, you don't have a product.

uh oh someone tell mapbox!

I'm not sure what there is to tell. Google restricted their Maps API a year or two back and a lot of map-my-run sites went down or had to switch to Open Street Map.

this is an old story wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

It's a little bit bigger problem than not "giving it away for free".

There were a lot of 3rd party apps built around Strava, which are effectively broken now with essentially no advance notice to most 3rd party developers.

The history of technology is littered with third-party developers being stunned when the free access upon which they built their products is suddenly revoked.

If your product relies on the free use of someone else's data, you don't have a product.

Might be an old story.

Might also be the wrong story.

Looks like Strava built its "product" around an open model, something that allowed them to gain a wider user base than would have been possible under a subscription model, and part of Strava's success was thanks to these 3rd party app developers bringing new innovative features that Strava was unable to develop with their own limited resources.

I guess we will see if the subscription model is viable for Strava in the long term, as many users (e.g. the ones that are complaining) will be unwilling to pay for something they used to get for free, and many, who liked the features only available in the 3rd party apps, will lose interest in Strava completely, looking for the next thing, and the Strava user base will certainly shrink, as the consumers play their role in the free market of choosing where to spend their dollars (or Euros, or Pounds, or Yen, or ...)

this is an old story wrote:

If your product relies on the free use of someone else's data, you don't have a product.

Doesn't this pretty literally describe strava as well?

this is an old story wrote:

If your product relies on the free use of someone else's data, you don't have a product.

Free users should remind Strava of that by deleting all their segments now that they have no use for them anymore.

Back in 2010 Twitter had a super open API - There were a dozen better 3rd party apps than the main twitter app.

Then, when twitter started monetizing - showing ads in middle of your timeline, intentionally showing stuff out of order, showing tweets from people you don't follow - The third party apps would of course ignore these things, so Twitter went and limited their API and forced everyone back on to the main platform.

You used to be able to connect to a Slack server with plain old IRC. An early benefit was that Slack was compatible with most other chat apps that companies were already using. Then once the userbase increased enough, no surprise they stopped supporting it.

In wrote:

When regular people are on one side, saying what they want...

And a corporation is on the other side, saying what they want...

Why are you so sympathetic to the corporation? You are doing volunteer work for them by advocating people pay.

If you're wondering, I'm trying to pick apart your motivations, which you haven't seemed to crack yet.

A lot of people are happy to support Strava, too. What about those people? Where do they fit in your world view?

I'm not sympathetic to the corporation, I just acknowledge they have every right to decide how to handle their product. And users have the right to decide whether to pay, go with a free account, or move to a different platform.

You have the right to complain too. Doesn't make you less of an entitled brat. Have a look at your own motivations.

As others have said Strava is free to whatever they want to try and make a profit.

However, having said that, good luck to them with a pitch which is essentially - "Hey, we used to give you all these features for free for 5+ years because we could operate with them being free. Now we'd like you to pay for these great exactly the same features because we can't operate without making a profit on them".

How exactly does that work? ?

Anyway, I'm now out. Thanks Strava!

Wildhorse wrote:

A lot of people are happy to support Strava, too. What about those people? Where do they fit in your world view?

I'm not sympathetic to the corporation, I just acknowledge they have every right to decide how to handle their product. And users have the right to decide whether to pay, go with a free account, or move to a different platform.

You have the right to complain too. Doesn't make you less of an entitled brat. Have a look at your own motivations.

For a while, it sounded like you started this thread because you wanted people to stop complaining about Strava. Now I just don't know anymore. As far as I can tell, this thread is satisfying your need to vent about and judge people who are complaining about strava.

As the originator of this thread, can you explain what need of yours you intended to meet by starting this thread? Can you tell me if it the thread getting close to meeting that need? I am not sure you can.

This way of seeing at it ignores that Strava's "product" relies on the 55,000,000 users, most of them non-paying users, who provided their data to Strava, and the contributions of the developers of the 44,000 registered 3rd party apps.

Without that data, features like Leaderboard loses most of its value, and features like Route building would be impossible.

So to say Strava owes them nothing seems like seeing it with selective blinders on. Strava essentially owes their whole business to the non-free market, socialist contributions of these free users and inspired app developers.

More from DC Rainmaker:

Socialist? Non free market? Inspired? Wtf...

I guess if user data were so valuable we wouldn't be having this conversation. Do you expect Amazon to give you free books because your shopping history may be of help in fine tuning their recommendations?

The only socialist thing here is people who are unwilling to invest 5€/month in Strava and nevertheless feel entitled to dictate how the company should function. But that's an insult to socialism - - these are not factory workers demanding to have a say in their future, these are freeloaders who want their leaderboards back. It's just ridiculous.

Hi wrote:

For a while, it sounded like you started this thread because you wanted people to stop complaining about Strava. Now I just don't know anymore. As far as I can tell, this thread is satisfying your need to vent about and judge people who are complaining about strava.

As the originator of this thread, can you explain what need of yours you intended to meet by starting this thread? Can you tell me if it the thread getting close to meeting that need? I am not sure you can.

Did I kill the thread, Wildhorse? I can't imagine you answering these questions honestly and continuing to post lol

I wanted to see how people who take their running seriously, and probably spend good money in shoes and gear, saw this whole thing.

I understand someone being disappointed some of the features not being free anymore. But, again, if it's not worth your money, don't pay.

I'm not buying Alphaflys anytime soon, they're not worth the money for me. I just don't demand Nike sell them for 100 or 120$ just because that's what a racing flat should cost at most. This argument would be as stupid as *it used to be free."

Wildhorse wrote:

Socialist? Non free market? Inspired? Wtf...

I guess if user data were so valuable we wouldn't be having this conversation. Do you expect Amazon to give you free books because your shopping history may be of help in fine tuning their recommendations?

The only socialist thing here is people who are unwilling to invest 5€/month in Strava and nevertheless feel entitled to dictate how the company should function. But that's an insult to socialism - - these are not factory workers demanding to have a say in their future, these are freeloaders who want their leaderboards back. It's just ridiculous.

You said Strava owes their free users nothing, but in fact Strava is greatly indebted to their free users and 3rd party developers alike. When you say "freeloaders", you could equally include Strava. Without the free users and the 3rd party developers, Strava would not have achieved a critical mass to make any business viable.

It is not my data that is valuable, but the combined data of 55,000,000 users. Strava only got to where they are today, by building up a community of users and developers that helped build up an eco-system, and being a community player within that community. If Strava wants to now play the capitalist, they should pay these 55,000,000 users for the data.

Your analogy to Amazon also fails, unless there was a time when they were giving out free books to help build their customer base. As far as I can tell, Amazon did not change their business model by changing the way they treat their suppliers.

I don't suggest free users dictate anything to Strava about how to conduct itself, but they do have a right to complain about Strava's change of stance to a community they helped build, and depended on, and their lack of gratitude. Most of the Strava users will be well within their capitalistic rights to decide how to spend their money, or not.

Wildhorse wrote:

I wanted to see how people who take their running seriously, and probably spend good money in shoes and gear, saw this whole thing.

And what NEED was that trying to address? The phrasing of the post was "What's with...", speaking from a position of incredulous confusion. Sounds like an invitation to get people to validate your viewpoint, to join you in the conversation you already wanted to have. Is it important to you to feel like you're in the majority, or that your viewpoint is "correct"?

I'm not buying Alphaflys anytime soon, they're not worth the money for me. I just don't demand Nike sell them for 100 or 120$ just because that's what a racing flat should cost at most. This argument would be as stupid as *it used to be free."

This is what confuses me. You claim you're just here to discuss, but your posts tend to inevitable end with you shoving your pre-existing worldview down someone else's throat. It seems like the final bit of each post is the part that addresses some need of yours. Do you want to feel heard? Like your opinion on these whiney entitled strava brats isn't a fringe view?