What I’m understanding Strava wants everyone to record activities on their phones?
It makes no sense, I’m sure 70% of their users use something else to record data.
If I had the money and knowledge I would create a competitor to strava and take all their business.
They don’t own the roads we ride/ run on.
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Hi TR people, please:
- prioritize implementing Wahoo → TR direct sync (as already mentioned)
- consider investing in your Career section, growing it to include more summary features like those found in Strava’s “You” tab under their “Progress” section (i.e., make me feel good about my career progress in different ways)
Strava is sticky because of the social feed and segments. All the other features are watered down versions of things you can find in other apps. They’ve just centralized them in an attempt to scale their offering, but in reality these features suck in comparison to their competitors. Strava will continue to win on the social stuff, fine. But other products where users keep a log of their activity (like TR) can easily beat Strava’s progress-summary features. I’d wager a good share of Strava users care less about social features than they do tracking their “personal” career.
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What strikes me as really hubristic here is that Strava doesn’t have functionality to replace the apps it’s blocking. If there were some other app trying to replicate Strava’s workout/social network model with their data then sure, block away.
But Strava has no AI functionality that’s worth a damn, no workout plan builder/coaching, nothing that works as well as VeloViewer for visualization. So they’re preemptively blocking all this functionality in hopes that in future they can build that out? They seem to be trying to replace something with nothing.
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Honestly, I’m not so sure. Speaking only for myself obviously, but my other social media accounts are way more lively and have more friends than on Strava, so if TR/Zwift/whatever give me a nice pretty image of my completed activity and some stats that I can share I’d be more than happy to post that to Instagram or Bluesky instead of Strava. If they kill their third-party ecosystem, I really don’t think they have that much of a moat left.
(Segments I could see as not being as easily replaceable as their activity feed, but I also don’t think it’s out of the question that someone else comes along and builds a competitor.)
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Thanks for the reply @Nate_Pearson is there a short term work around for Wahoo users until the integration goes live?
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Ridewithgps has added segments. I’ve only noticed a few times when rides sync it notifies me of some segment I completed and where I rank. It’s still very basic. But ridewithgps has slowly been adding more features like segments and they sync more activity types. I wouldnt say it’s so much a Strava competitor on the social stuff but they’re adding more and more.
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Great point
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But they can’t detect someone going 80mph in a car for miles on end.
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I’ve been a premium member since 2015 and I just cancelled. Frankly, the data aggregation was the best feature for me.
I was in the yearly plan, so my account is still active until March. If they back track, I will renew.
I hope that my cancellation sends a signal. Of course, not mine alone. But I’m hoping others will as well.
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I cancelled also. Companies that make tone-deaf, consumer-unfriendly decisions like this don’t deserve my money.
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I only use TrainerRoad indoors on their app so if anything this is a reason for me to stop using Strava. I didn’t have a subscription in the first place and their tracking of other sports isn’t even that great. I find it crazy that Strava is going down this route when uploading files to various platforms isn’t unique to them. It’s just easier to pull from Strava since everyone already uploads to it. I hope this causes the other companies to update their platforms to support uploading from other devices/wearables.
Additionally, I hope that this pushes TrainerRoad to have full Apple Health/Fitness support. I know Apple isn’t the easiest company to develop for, especially when you’re asking to access user health data, but there are other apps that already have that ability. The app I use for outdoor rides (Cadence) is able to pull my live heart rate data from my Apple Watch (with their companion app), and then upload the ride directly to the Apple Fitness app and Strava simultaneously. I do believe that TR allows you to push outdoor workouts to the Apple Watch Workouts app as it is, so they may be part way there. I track my non cycling workouts with my apple watch as well, so being able to have that automatically sync with TrainerRoad along with my weight would be awesome
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Premium since 2011. I just stopped my auto renew. I think the social aspect and a central leaderboard for segments are going to be the biggest challenges to find replacements for… but hey, maybe someone can start a new cycling page on Geocities. 
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Try ridewithgps.
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This is such a great point. So many segments are ruined by cheaters and they just let them stay up even though they’re obviously e-bikes/ shuttles. Hopefully the angst keeps building and we get better integration from companies that actually care about sport and see the users as a valuable resource as opposed to data.
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Also premium since 2011, and just cancelled. If they change their mind before March, when my current sub runs out, I’ll reconsider.
-Tim
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In a statement sent to The Verge, Strava VP of Communications and Social Impact Brian Bell said, “We anticipate that these changes will affect only a small fraction (less than .1 percent) of the applications on the Strava platform–the overwhelming majority of existing use cases are still allowed, including coaching platforms focused on providing feedback to users and tools that help users understand their data and performance.”
How many users on that “less than .1%” of affected apps, though?
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Just cancelled mine too
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Curious how they say coaching platforms aren’t affected when intervals.icu is saying the opposite.
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Ugh… this is so annoying to the core. Releasing this statement going into December when 30-50% of most development teams are likely on a holiday at any given week is a giant “up yours” to partners.
Furthermore I have even less confidence that Strava can innovate past what they have in the coaching, training prescription or data visualization. Their company size and track record doesn’t support a roll out like that.
So that leaves them as the ‘great’ social sport data aggregator that consistently ruins partner relationships and pisses off their users without any value or obvious ambition to create positive change in the market. Great time to cancel my subscription 
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