Interesting.
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Good thing he launched videos before he left, that really changed the game.
/sarcasm
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They could hire me, I use the platform, understand technology, and know what people actually use and want.
⌠Nah. Letâs hire some out of touch person with an MBA instead.
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Itâll be interesting to see if the new leadership will bring major changes in line with their past actions; that is, cripple the free version without adding any new features.
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Interesting. With the large amount of users (95 million, 7 billion activities), I am surprised they havenât made it an ad platform yet. Perhaps that is the next phase.
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This is what it should be. Have ads within the feed for free users. No ads or limited ads for subscribers. Open all or most features to everyone. Every other social media platform has ads. Not sure why strava doesnât.
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I will say that I normally hate ads. But since I donât use Strava anywhere near a social platform and never look at any feeds, Iâd take ads if they brought back KOM leaderboards.
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I wonder if thatâs why they havenât. I assume that the majority of users are kind of like me and you- I almost exclusively look at my activities, maybe a friendâs if it pops up that theyâve done something big or notable. I donât scroll like I would a traditional social platform and so wouldnât get any ads unless theyâre either within the activity or leaderboard.
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Wouldnât surprise me. What also wouldnât surprise me is them keeping features locked behind premium AND starting ads. So the worst of both worlds.
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This could be any company, right? The levels of dumb I see in big companies is staggering sometimes (and I have an MBA and an MSE)
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Small and midsize companies too. The ones that aspire to be big companies emulate them.
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ETA: Any EU member Strava subscribers should check out the pricing section. Seems Strava is giving discounts to those who ask for it, effectively fixing the pricing disparity that is illegal per EU rules.
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I dislike your use of âfixingâ. 
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Yeah, italics used in a weak attempt at sarcasm may go unnoticed 
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Oh I knew it was sarcasm, I still dislike even the use of sarcasm with it.
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It has to be knowing that the âout-of-touchâ MBA will say the right things to investors if they need more funding and do the predictable slow death by a thousand cuts while they still struggle to monetize their network. They will keep the doors open until thereâs a chance someone else comes up with a revolutionary idea/strategy, or something external in the market changes that give them new opportunities. Itâs a conservative dumb that sometimes works as an interim, but with the cultural issues that have been showing through at Strava in recent years someone with a fresh vision is going to be needed soon.
Ultimately it seems like they are stuck on a simple fundamental problem, the value in Strava is in the network effect. There are 100 apps that can handle the same individualâs data to various different strengths, the only features that other platforms are missing is hundreds of your friends/local legends/pros activities. That is all accessible from the free version of Strava, plus their main target for premium (heavy users) likely has some combination of competitorâs products like their gps syncing with Garmin or a training calendar in TR that are often much better for focused use.
Ads in the free version are the easy answer, and thatâs what every other social network has gone with. They would probably need to do a full overhaul of the news feed to make them work though, between ads, challenge posts, and trainer rides with no map data the current newsfeed would be a pretty miserable place and depress that network of users.
I expect to have to pay for a service one way or another. Either through subscription or ads. And I get that some models have variations of both (Like Hulu or Paramount +) where you have a subscription and still have to watch ads. I prefer one or the other but understand they have to keep the lights on. And as far as I know Strava is yet to turn a profit.
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I think it would likely lead to uncomfortable discussions about how all those data that Strava collects are being used (yes, I am aware that they sell aggregated data).
It would be quite a departure from the stance that Strava has had so far:
Can I buy display ads on Strava?
We do not sell regular advertising space on Strava. Our âadvertisingâ offering comes in the form of sponsored challenges, which are available to brands that can be a motivational influence to athletes, and not a disruptive force.
Could work, but not a strategy without itâs problems.
I expect to pay for a service one way or another too. But I also donât, or wonât, pay more for a service than the perceived value I receive ESPECIALLY, if the company is flippant to its users about priorities and feature requests. The latter is strava to a T. This is the company that hired a CEO from instragram who decided to reorder our feeds away from chronological. Both are gone now AFAIK. Theyâve defaulted to hiding my start/stop locations, which is great, but there should be an option to turn that off for rides that start from public locations. Etc., Etc. Iâd be happy to pay something if I thought they were listening. Appears they only learn the hard way.
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