I think the killer application of Strava is segments. Even without caring about being the quickest of all users (aka getting KOMs), I find it valuable to be able to compare my progress on a specific piece of road over time. Paired with your heart rate and perceived effort it allows you to gauge how fit you currently are - or how far you are from your peak form.
Someone just needs to make an open central hub for segments and leaderboards per activity type.
Then you need a way to block and nuke toxic segments and submitters, a voting system perhaps.
Detecting segments during an activity is tricky and I've been meaning to investigate it further perhaps via ChatGPT explainer but I know it involves lat/lon bounding boxes, detecting the start/end points within those points.
I vaguely remember Strava has some kind of patent on segments though.
$80/year isn’t much in the context of most sports that people use Strava for.
I can see how casual, frugal runners might be put off by $80/year, but casual users aren’t the target audience for competitive apps.
I’m amazed at how many people will buy $10,000 bikes and wear $600 of specialized gear and then scoff at paying $80 for a service that tracks exactly what they want.
i think you’re looking at it wrong if all you consider are the bare numbers. someone may find enough _value_ in an expensive bike and expensive gear and not enough value in strava’s paid features. value is subjective, right?
in the mtb community at least it’s not uncommon for someone with a $6k bike to be driving a $3k car and wearing street clothes.
i find it very easy to imagine people stretching financially for expensive bikes and then cutting costs by cancelling strava.
I cancelled my subscription before the price hike. I agree it's not a lot of money but it also was not a lot of value. I think the criteria should be about how much value something provides.
As a runner, that was not interested in any of the social functionality, I didn't really get anything out of strava that was not already in Garmin. What are the "tracks exactly what you want" feature(s) in strava for you?
