strava free vs paid feature set changes...

[kmac]

https://cyclingtips.com/2020/05/strava-shake-up-major-changes-for-paid-and-free-users/

i personally don't care much about the segments (i am a current and long-term subscriber), but do enjoy the service. hope they're doing (and will continue to do) ok, because i do find a lot of value in the mapping and social aspects.

[joosttx]

I had summit. I let it expired. I cannot tell the difference from summit vs free. I like the free better as a result.

[makoti]

I'm ok with hiding other people's results behind a paywall, but it sounds like your own results will be hidden, as well. So you can't compare your own efforts? Does this mean the end of PRs for anyone who doesn't pay?

[Elefantino]

I'm a subscriber. Will continue to be. Hope this sets up Strava for a long, successful run.

[johnniecakes]

I am a subscriber also and am very satisfied except they removed the bluetooth link to my heart rate strap. Now I have to use another device if I want to connect HR to the ride. I don't have or want a computer sitting on my bars, I find myself looking at them too much and I prefer as little clutter as possible.

[Monsieur Toast]

Multi-year subscriber here. Didn't even bother to cancel when I couldn't ride a bike for a solid year. If you want all the features it's $60/year and that's a great deal for me considering how much time I spend on it.

Other option is they can make it completely free and hit everyone with an ad every other screen just like Instagram, and sell all your personal information to third parties for targeted marketing and god knows what else. Especially juicy with all that GPS data.

And if it really chafes your caboose, you can always just get off the internet and go ride your bike.

[denapista]

Multi-year subscriber here. Didn't even bother to cancel when I couldn't ride a bike for a solid year. If you want all the features it's $60/year and that's a great deal for me considering how much time I spend on it.

Other option is they can make it completely free and hit everyone with an ad every other screen just like Instagram, and sell all your personal information to third parties for targeted marketing and god knows what else. Especially juicy with all that GPS data.

And if it really chafes your caboose, you can always just get off the internet and go ride your bike.

Yeah.. I fully agree.. I'm having a hard time understanding the person complaining about this change. I know people who work at STRAVA in SF. Small company and the lack of ads can't be understated.

If strava is that much of a necessity of a tool for folks, they should pony up the $60/yr.

[dem]

I don't even know what Strava is for any more - once they locked down the privacy so hard you couldn't find anyone to "follow" them.. what is the point?

They never seemed to find a business model. Locking out leaderboards for segments and locking out 3rd party apps? Last gasp to stay in business before being sold off to Garmin?

[kppolich]

The Chrome Extension (free) Elevate is superior to paid strava anyway. It takes your strava and make it better with graphs and more data.

[dem]

The Chrome Extension (free) Elevate is superior to paid strava anyway. It takes your strava and make it better with graphs and more data.

This will no longer work, obviously. They are blocking integration with 44,000 apps/extensions effective immediately.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/05/strava-cuts-off-leaderboard-for-free-users-reduces-3rd-party-apps-for-all-and-more.html

[p nut]

I don't even know what Strava is for any more - once they locked down the privacy so hard you couldn't find anyone to "follow" them.. what is the point?

? I’ve never had any problems finding people on there. 🤷🏻*♂️

[dem]

? I’ve never had any problems finding people on there. 🤷🏻*♂️

They may be older users.. by default the new privacy settings mean you cannot find them on leaderboards, fly-bys, etc. So even if you rode side-by-side with someone for 8 hours, you can go home and not be able to track them down to follow them.

Plenty of times I rode up the same hill with someone and thought "huh, I should follow that person" - which you basically can't do any more.

[Kyle h]

I don’t really care about competing for segments but sometimes it’s fun to see how you stack up. I’ll be unsyncing Strava as of today from my Garmin Connect acct as Strava doesn’t really add $60 worth of value to my life, especially when better mapping and performance tracking services exist.

[FlashUNC]

Everything they're trying to push is done better by someone somewhere else. Route planning? Komoot. Training plan tracking? Uh, pick the list: Training Peaks, etc etc.

The leaderboard is THE reason Strava is Strava. Paywalling that is just moving the deck chairs around imo.

[unterhausen]

leaderboard is just depressing for me anyway. Around here, there are so many users I can't even be DFL. We stopped for a long snack break on a fairly remote gravel climb and were still in the top 2/3 of riders. I do find it mildly amusing that they keep track of my PR's on segments.

[p nut]

They may be older users.. by default the new privacy settings mean you cannot find them on leaderboards, fly-bys, etc. So even if you rode side-by-side with someone for 8 hours, you can go home and not be able to track them down to follow them.

Plenty of times I rode up the same hill with someone and thought "huh, I should follow that person" - which you basically can't do any more.

Ok, gotcha. I thought you meant searching by name.

I signed up for the subscription today. $60/year isn’t bad.

[pasadena]

Word.
it's still free.

If you want to take advantage of Strava's social features, you pay. Thats simple.
Entitlement is a bitch.

Yeah.. I fully agree.. I'm having a hard time understanding the person complaining about this change. I know people who work at STRAVA in SF. Small company and the lack of ads can't be understated.

If strava is that much of a necessity of a tool for folks, they should pony up the $60/yr.

[Clean39T]

Everything they're trying to push is done better by someone somewhere else. Route planning? Komoot. Training plan tracking? Uh, pick the list: Training Peaks, etc etc.

The leaderboard is THE reason Strava is Strava. Paywalling that is just moving the deck chairs around imo.

Strava's "Beacon" feature is the most consistent and easy to use of any of the options - my Wahoo tracker sends bad data to my spouse all the time, not even worth having it on.. So, $60/yr for peace of mind for your significant other? That's a small price to pay.

[FlashUNC]

Word.
it's still free.

If you want to take advantage of Strava's social features, you pay. Thats simple.
Entitlement is a bitch.

So's asking your product -- the people Strava is trying to monetize -- to pay to use the service that is monetizing them?

That's....big brass balls kind of cojones.

[pasadena]

So's asking your product -- the people Strava is trying to monetize -- to pay to use the service that is monetizing them?

That's....big brass balls kind of cojones.

Then don't use it.
What's the big deal.

[FlashUNC]

Strava's "Beacon" feature is the most consistent and easy to use of any of the options - my Wahoo tracker sends bad data to my spouse all the time, not even worth having it on.. So, $60/yr for peace of mind for your significant other? That's a small price to pay.

Use the Wahoo Live Tracker with only one small hiccup over the last, however long I've had a Wahoo. Ain't worth $60/year to a mediocre platform developer to reduce my issue count from 1 to 0.

[FlashUNC]

Then don't use it.
What's the big deal.

None, the only reason my stuff uploads there anymore is I'm too lazy to turn off the autosync in the Wahoo app.

What I don't like is Strava pissing on our legs and telling us it's raining. Well, that and they'll sucker some MAMILs into forking over the $60 a year like they're Sister Mary's Alms for the Poor and not a venture backed company that shot it's shot and whiffed horribly.

[pasadena]

Sure, that's why you keep using strava.

You a pro-bono MAMIL financial advocate?

None, the only reason my stuff uploads there anymore is I'm too lazy to turn off the autosync in the Wahoo app.

What I don't like is Strava pissing on our legs and telling us it's raining. Well, that and they'll sucker some MAMILs into forking over the $60 a year like they're Sister Mary's Alms for the Poor and not a venture backed company that shot it's shot and whiffed horribly.

[morrisericd]

At first it irked me that they were basically requiring you to pay for their service. I was a paid member for 2-3 years, the last year or so I switched to the free version (and couldn't really tell the difference).

After reading through the first page of responses I realize that some of you are correct. It's really the only social media I use, and I use it a lot. It's tons of fun (and motivating) to see your rides and what your friends and family are up to.

The fact that there are no ads is the number one reason I'm going to start paying again. I'm glad they are a small company and I hope they start turning a profit. 55 million users! Wow!

[Spoker]

Free version constantly seems to try me to sign up. Am I doing it wrong?

[joosttx]

Strava's "Beacon" feature is the most consistent and easy to use of any of the options - my Wahoo tracker sends bad data to my spouse all the time, not even worth having it on.. So, $60/yr for peace of mind for your significant other? That's a small price to pay.

I use the Garmin feature. I have used iPhone tracking to let my wife know where I am too but you have to turn that one on. I too have issues with wahoo tracking. The Garmin or the apple iPhone feature I have not had any issues.

[Toddykins]

Everything they're trying to push is done better by someone somewhere else. Route planning? Komoot. Training plan tracking? Uh, pick the list: Training Peaks, etc etc.

The leaderboard is THE reason Strava is Strava. Paywalling that is just moving the deck chairs around imo.

Does komoot overlay its heatmap data on its route builder? Does anyone other than strava do this? Does anyone have close to strava’s vast data nearly everywhere in the world underlying the heat maps?

I happily pay for this feature. You can instantly identify a wealth of potential routes no matter where you are. I will cry if Strava ever goes away because of this.

[Clean39T]

I signed up for the full package a couple weeks ago after they stopped allowing the "Beacon Only" option - so my only minor gripe is that I didn't get two months (60-days) of free use..... So be it.

Now if Strava would just add a place for framebuilders to post pics (and a general bike pR0n and commenting section) and some classifieds, I could quit FB entirely.

[FlashUNC]

Sure, that's why you keep using strava.

You a pro-bono MAMIL financial advocate?

I can't tell you the last time I logged into the site to look at anything. Not friends rides, not rando influencers, not my times on segments. But they're still getting my data. So yeah, maybe I am the rube here.

But "use" is not what I would call my relationship with their Barn Fire of a platform.

[FlashUNC]

Does komoot overlay its heatmap data on its route builder? Does anyone other than strava do this? Does anyone have close to strava’s vast data nearly everywhere in the world underlying the heat maps?

I happily pay for this feature. You can instantly identify a wealth of potential routes no matter where you are. I will cry if Strava ever goes away because of this.

The heat map data is nice, but their mapping software makes MapQuest circa 2001 look cutting edge.

And just because everyone rides a specific segment doesn't make it good or useful. Everybody in Charlotte did the airport loop for years on the Saturday morning chain gang. Would I recommend that to someone looking for scenery? God no.

[pasadena]

It's a "Barn Fire" and ripping off unsuspecting old people, it's all kinds of horsecrap and you can spend time posting all about it but you're "too lazy to turn it off" and take a minute to not be a member of it.

I can't tell you the last time I logged into the site to look at anything. Not friends rides, not rando influencers, not my times on segments. But they're still getting my data. So yeah, maybe I am the rube here.

But "use" is not what I would call my relationship with their Barn Fire of a platform.

[Toddykins]

The heat map data is nice, but their mapping software makes MapQuest circa 2001 look cutting edge.

And just because everyone rides a specific segment doesn't make it good or useful. Everybody in Charlotte did the airport loop for years on the Saturday morning chain gang. Would I recommend that to someone looking for scenery? God no.

Ugh - I think I am due at least a little more credit than this in terms of sophistication. Of course, the most heavily ridden routes in dense urban areas may not yield 'good' riding.

Let's run through a hypothetical example. Let's say Joe Rider is going to Ovaro to ride the Zoncolan. He doesn't know much else about the area, but wants to fit in at least one additional climb. He turns on the heat map - boom, within ten seconds he is able to identify the switchbacks of Monte Crostis, within two minutes or so of scrolling he finds the Forcella di Lavardet.

Could he have found Monte Crostis by poring over a normal map? Sure, but it would have taken some time. Could he have found Forcella di Lavardet? Not without spending a lot of time poring over a map and other sources.

I have been fortunate to ride all over the world. I happen to enjoy spending hours cross-referencing strava, maps, google earth/satellite imagery, etc - but I have yet to come across a more powerful single tool than Strava's heat maps for identifying good riding. This works pretty much everywhere the world over at this point (just don't go stealing my KOM in Bhutan, ok?).

If you have a suggestion as to what would work better, I am all ears.

[laupsi]

Yea, I’m simple. Strava has many benefits for me, all listed in previous posts here. $60/year, totally worth it!

[Keith A]

I'm expecting that the Strava users out there got an email from the owners today. I see that they are not yet profitable and that their focus is on their subscription service. Here's a snippet of the email...

This focus on subscription ensures that Strava can serve athletes decades from now, and in an up-front way that honors the support of the athletes we serve today. We plan to take what we earn from these changes and reinvest straight back into building more and better features – not devising ways to fill up your feed with ads or sell your personal information. We simply want to make a product so good that you’re happy to pay for it.

Sounds like they will be trimming up items that are free. I honestly haven't even looked at how much their subscription costs, it just seems like everybody wants in on the subscription model.

[ergott]

Meh, I keep it to be social and would kind of miffed to not see some KOM's, but there are so many other ways to work with GPS that are free. I have always been using the free version of ridewithgps for routing anyway. I use WKO5 for watts and training. Now that I consider worth paying for.

Strava is entertainment and I'll continue to use what they offer for free, but I have no plans to pay for premium content.

[rzthomas]

I've derived a lot of value from Strava: looking at and downloading safe, established routes in new places, making connections with other riders (some became super close friends!), and finding ways to motivate myself now that I no longer race.

I'll happily continue supporting them so that they keep their doors open.

[Lionel]

Same here. Been paying since 2013


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[morrisericd]

Cycling Tips had a nice writeup about it today. I will continue to support Strava and others who's content / work I use for free and enjoy.

https://cyclingtips.com/2020/05/why-you-should-support-strava-and-pay-for-the-things-you-love/

[oldguy00]

If all you care about is having your workouts uploaded to strava, then you are probably still fine with their free service.
I rarely bother to look at strava segments. Neither do my friends. Its more just a social platform for us to see what workout everyone did that day.

[Lionel]

I like looking at my leaderboard for segments. Not so much others. Sort of interesting to see how you did on a climb relative to how you felt etc....

[superbowlpats]

I'll happily continue supporting them so that they keep their doors open.

me too. its cheap and i use it everyday. not everything in life can be free

[FlashUNC]

Already a thread on this subject.

[Vamoots58]

i'm a subscriber. Will continue to be. Hope this sets up strava for a long, successful run.

+1!!

[Keith A]

Already a thread on this subject.Thanks. Merged the discussions into one.

[Tony T]

So,..... how does all of this affect the Strava Paceline Forum Club?

[smontanaro]

I've only ever been a free user, and leaderboard? I'd be so far down the list they'd have to mount an expedition to find me. Still, I do find it useful to compare my own performance over time. It's not terribly useful on segments I've only ridden a few times, but on routine routes, I see some segments I've ridden dozens of times. That's enough to make comparison and cancel out to some degree the effect of head and tail winds. It sounds like that's going away if I don't pony up the bucks?

[Keith A]

So,..... how does all of this affect the Strava Paceline Forum Club?Not sure. I haven't taken the time to figure out what is moving to the paid subscription.

[p nut]

I wouldn’t think it would affect any of the clubs. Only changes are to individual user interface. From what I understand.

[Keith A]

Here are the details of what is going away...

New subscription features that were previously free
• Overall segment leaderboards (Top 10 view is still free)
• Comparing, filtering and analyzing segment efforts
• Route planning on strava.com, with a huge redesign launching soon!
• Matched Runs: Analyze performance on identical runs over time
• Training Log on Android and strava.com
• Monthly activity trends and comparisons

I must admit that I like checking out the segment leaderboards, so this might push me over to the paid subscription.

[redir]

If all you care about is having your workouts uploaded to strava, then you are probably still fine with their free service.
I rarely bother to look at strava segments. Neither do my friends. Its more just a social platform for us to see what workout everyone did that day.

All I do is upload the ride maybe with some photo's and comments, make comments on friends rides and also like to look at the map, elevation, and max speed, distance and so on. I never got an email about this but is all that stuff still free then?

[tctyres]

For running, I find the matched runs feature useful. I do use the service, and I have not paid. I don't mind paying when the time comes.

[snip]...I have yet to come across a more powerful single tool than Strava's heat maps for identifying good riding. This works pretty much everywhere the world over at this point (just don't go stealing my KOM in Bhutan, ok?).

If you have a suggestion as to what would work better, I am all ears.

This is true. Every time I want to ride in a new place, I just cross reference that map and I've got the guts of routes that I can construct.

There are probably things that would work better, but they might already be implicit in Strava. In major metropolitan areas, streets with bike lanes and sharrows come up automatically as hot. There would probably be a way to integrate speed from cars on Google Maps to Strava that would make safer bike routes, but I'm not aware of anyone who is doing that.

[benb]

I've been on Strava for 8 years now I think, and I paid for a good portion of that time. But I haven't paid for it in about a year and a half now, I decided they weren't offering a good value proposition for what it costs.

I'm also a software engineer and have been through this startup dance myself quite a few times.

Honestly I think they've screwed up too much for me to give them money and I don't feel any need to support them out of charity.

Giving away everything and not working hard on the pay tier and then realizing you're not making money after many years and then trying to lock things down to convert people doesn't work.

Strava has done very very little to their software in the last 5 years. My guess is they actually tried to bring in money to try and sell Peloton bikes, Zwift, TrainerRoad, etc.. and get a referral bonus from the those companies, etc.. because most of their new software development seems to have been integration work with those platforms.

I hate seeing Zwift/TrainerRoad/Peloton in my feed, it doesn't make me want to pay.

Now the other thing is this isn't even the first time they started taking features out of the free tier, but if they start removing social features from the app they are going to tank themselves fast and bring on the end. Social websites only work when they have a critical mass of users that keep the success of the service feeding upon itself. If you start removing the social features from the users who are free they will go away. As they go away the social scene starts to fail and more of the paid users will convert to free & then quit.

I'd love to know how Strava is run. Are they a team in the US? Is it a business team and they outsourced their software dev overseas? Their software has stagnated incredibly the last 5 years. Maybe they have a ton of technical debt. Technical Debt is a term for what happens to software when you rush & ignore quality. You build up a debt that eventually makes everything take longer and longer and everything becomes more and more difficult, and it can easily sink a company. Maybe they laid off a lot of engineers years ago. None of it makes any sense. I get the impression Training Peaks or some of the other sites are much smaller companies than Strava and yet they tend to have a pretty steady drumbeat of software updates and new features.

If you ever go on their support forum you can see how many people have been upset. There are all kinds of bugs in Strava that have been reported hundreds or thousands of times for years and Strava has not been able to fix them.

No new features for years and years and bugs not getting fixed and then removing features is not a recipe for converting users to paid service, regardless of the domain. It has nothing to do with cycling.

[jpritchet74]

Cycling Tips had a nice writeup about it today. I will continue to support Strava and others who's content / work I use for free and enjoy.

https://cyclingtips.com/2020/05/why-you-should-support-strava-and-pay-for-the-things-you-love/

This is it for me. I enjoy following my friend's rides on Strava and also finding new routes. Absolutely worth supporting the company at $60 a year.

[Wayne77]

Count me in as someone who has been paying the monthly fee for years who still feels he’s getting good value and plans to keep paying. This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve used a service, something has changed with the pay structure, people get mad, and the thought isn’t “you guys are all wrong”, the thought is “geez I must be missing something here because there’s a lot of smart people talking about why the move sucks.”

So I guess this is another case where not knowing why I should be really angry is actually working to my benefit :-).

I bet the owners probably look back and agree not all the moves were the best, but hindsight is 20/20, and I don’t blame them for trying to figure out a way to be profitable...I know not everyone feel like they get more value than what they feel is worth $0, but for me personally I really like things like the heat maps, historical training data, live segments, etc. 8 bucks a months seems pretty reasonable. I hope this works out for them.

[benb]

I think the key element with whether or not you think Strava is providing a good value is probably whether you have compared and contrasted vs other services and whether or not you value training data/help or social features more.

Strava has had close to 10 years, where is coaching integration?

Why are the training features almost exactly the same as 2013?

Why have they never figured out a way to respond to reports of dangerous/illegal segments?

Why no progress on filtering out motorcycle/car KOMs?

Etc, etc..

I have been comparing and contrasting with Training Peaks personally.. I was on Strava first, I got on Training Peaks to work with a coach later.

Training Peaks you get notices of upgrades just like most paid software packages even though it's a website. The upgrades happen regularly and they message like a professional software application. There have been many many updates in Training Peaks since I started paying, there have been very few bugs, and the bugs get fixed.

They basically sell the whole thing like a professional product that justifies its cost, not like a social app/website that comes with the expectation it's going to be free.

To be honest I am not sure why Strava has not just monetized with ads. It makes way more sense for the way they started. They could put ads in the feeds, they could have famous segments sponsored by advertisers, whatever. I think they would get more traction with that, because social media users are completely used to be bombarded with ads. And the Zwift/Peloton/TrainerRoad/whatever stuff in the feed already feels like ads.

The other thing that makes way more sense IMO for monetization would be to monetize the apps. Website = Free, App = Paid. If you want to upload your rides from your iPhone or Android through their app, you pay for that since they can't really put ads in there. They would still need to figure out how to get something from users who upload via Garmin/Wahoo/whatever, but those users would probably be required to view their rides/data through the website where the ads would be.

[b33]

They are a VC backed company. That money comes due and when it does it has interest. I'm sure STRAVA is there.

I pay but I am finding less and less desirable about the platform and I was one of the first 100 athletes on it and have made segments in LA and NYC that are used by tens of the thousands.

The mere fact that segments don't separate individual rides from group rides is just pathetic. I'm in an urban area and the segments are a hot mess.

[benb]

They are a VC backed company. That money comes due and when it does it has interest. I'm sure STRAVA is there.

I pay but I am finding less and less desirable about the platform and I was one of the first 100 athletes on it and have made segments in LA and NYC that are used by tens of the thousands.

The mere fact that segments don't separate individual rides from group rides is just pathetic. I'm in an urban area and the segments are a hot mess.

Yes for sure... 10 years is a long time, and the VCs & investors probably decided it was time for an exit years ago.

The other thing with paid services is I don't necessarily expect them to sell my data to others and/or use my data as part of the value proposition to others.

If all of us users didn't let Strava share our segment times with everyone else than Strava's value to the paid users drops.

Whereas when I use Training Peaks my data is my data. AFAICT they are not mixing my data with anyone else's and they're not monetizing the aggregate data from all the users to create a different revenue stream. (Strava apparently licenses the heat maps to cities for planning, etc...)

Any time you're a social platform you need to keep the costs low because your users are part of the product.

Facebook users are the product, not the customer.

Strava is kind of a mix:

- Free users are part of the product
- Paid users are both product & customer
- 3rd party data customers are a factor as well

[unterhausen]

is there a localized version of the heat map or do you still have to go to the global heat map and zoom in for a while before you get to the area you are interested in?

I thought about going with the part of strava I use when it only cost $30, but $60 is above my level for doing something on a whim. Right now anyway.

[Wayne77]

benb, thanks for the additional points - make a ton of sense. I’m sure part of this is just that...I’m not informed enough to know all the alternatives out there. That said, product mix / feature set is such an organic thing. One persons ideal feature set may be another’s bloated overkill I suppose.

Sometimes when I do have the energy to do really thorough comparison shopping it turns into a laborious pros and cons exercise leaving me feeling like there are no good options out there, wishing I could cherry pick all the good from each alternative to combine into one ultimate ideal and being bummed that I don’t have the capital to do it myself...and eventually settling for something with some dampened enthusiasm and a little voice telling me that if I had not taken the hours to research and read reviews to figure out why I shouldn’t be satisfied with a product I’d be happier with whatever I settled on and kinda stoked that such a cool product exists. Sometimes I don’t know something is lacking with all this cool tech until someone tells me it is :-)

The other thought that occurs to me is that there’s probably a really interesting psychology study here...economics of choice, and that sort of thing. I think someone did a TED talk on this years ago. I used to be a really big audiophile. I’d listen to a reference recording on a new set of high end speakers and could pick out every little nuance that wasn’t just quite right. That was years ago. Now I just have some Jaybird Bluetooth earbuds and my ears are used to the way things sound and so I think they sound pretty swell and really enjoy my music every bit as much if not more so than I did then.

So now I’ve gone WAAAY off topic...apologies to the OP.. It’s a good discussion and appreciate all the perspectives.

[benb]

This actually made me decide to delete my account completely.

Strava has always had this social media anxiety thing for me too. There's a good part of that and a bad part of that, it can be motivating to see your friend's rides. And then there has been the annoyance of all the non-ride posts/updates.

But it can also be demotivating when you're not your fittest. And Segments have been demotivating for a long time for me cause it's always questionable whether there's cheating or inaccurate data going on. (The data accuracy on MTB is way worse IME) Same thing with group rides vs solo rides.

The Social part is Strava's strength, that's where you have to decide if the value is there. For me if I'm not willing to pay for the social part I'm not willing to pay for the other parts where they have long been not very competitive, and the social has gone downhill since the feed became clogged with stuff that isn't actual rides.

To delete you go to the Profile menu -> Settings -> My Account and then scroll down to the bottom.

They have a pretty good "Download all my Data" process similar to deleting facebook. Strava's appears to be better because they don't wreck your data the way FB does when they hyper-compress your photos & videos.

The other thing with all these freemium web products is they appear cheap but how many are you signed up for? $60/yr for Strava is not much, but if you're 10 different things does spending $600 on a bunch of websites start to sound expensive? I tend to look at each one with that overall picture. I get way less value out of Strava than paying for streaming music or video for example.

[Keith A]

...
The mere fact that segments don't separate individual rides from group rides is just pathetic. I'm in an urban area and the segments are a hot mess.This is an excellent point. Many of our local segments have the leaderboards full with results from groups rides, and you'd have to be an extremely strong/gifted cyclist to make it anywhere near the top on a solo ride.

[PaMtbRider]

I wish they had a family plan. Not sure I want to pay $120 for both of us.

[mtechnica]

First google play music now this. Dark times indeed.

[flying]

I have always for many years kept my own logs in Excel.
In it I track each days ride with
date/time/dist/avg mph/max mph/calories/avg HR/Max Hr/ Elevation gain/weight after ride/notes/PB?

I also use Golden Cheetah (http://www.goldencheetah.org/#section-download) which has more training analytical data than I need

I did use Strava free section before just as an online backup or when traveling to temp log data but now just use my phone or tablet to add to my Excel's

I guess if you need maps or competition online then Strava could be attractive.
For me it would be more distracting from cycling & what I wanted to do.

I can understand them wanting to get paid though they have also profited already as others have said by folks freely adding routes/segments etc etc

[Toddykins]

is there a localized version of the heat map or do you still have to go to the global heat map and zoom in for a while before you get to the area you are interested in?

I thought about going with the part of strava I use when it only cost $30, but $60 is above my level for doing something on a whim. Right now anyway.

Within the settings menu on the lefthand side of the desktop routebuilder there is a toggle option to enable the global heatmap. It overlays the heatmap on whatever area you are looking at. It’s amazeballs.

[GregL]

This is an excellent point. Many of our local segments have the leaderboards full with results from groups rides, and you'd have to be an extremely strong/gifted cyclist to make it anywhere near the top on a solo ride.
It's even sillier than that. I've heard riders asking their buddies for "help getting their KOM back." Any KOMs I've ever held were completely anecdotal. Getting assistance to "win" KOMs? Silly...

Greg

[Keith A]

It's even sillier than that. I've heard riders asking their buddies for "help getting their KOM back." Any KOMs I've ever held were completely anecdotal. Getting assistance to "win" KOMs? Silly...

Greghttps://i.pinimg.com/564x/ec/5b/92/ec5b92584eaaf42211c655ee4ce40f30.jpg

[benb]

I'm not really sure exactly how the difference stack up but if you are using a Garmin then you can view heatmaps inside Garmin Connect now, so if you're not going to pay for Strava heatmaps there's another option there.

This is exactly what I'm talking about, when I just logged into GC it has a pile of new features that weren't there last time I looked. They've built out the heatmaps, they've greatly expanded their segment features, they've got more graphs and reports using TSS and IF and such.

Not saying these features in GC are better than Strava or elsewhere but the point is you can see they are investing in it.

Heatmaps are not super important to me I guess. I know my main cycling area very well. It's probably more valuable to people who travel a lot and pack their bike.

[pasadena]

is there a localized version of the heat map or do you still have to go to the global heat map and zoom in for a while before you get to the area you are interested in?


There is a search window on the upper right of the heatmap. Just type the city/area/street/etc and it goes there.

There is a also a personal heatmap of your activity for the year or all-time

[unterhausen]

Thanks for pointing out the garmin heatmaps. In this area, they are really sparse. I upload my rides through connect, so I guess it takes more than one person to show up on their maps

[pasadena]

To delete you go to the Profile menu -> Settings -> My Account and then scroll down to the bottom.

They have a pretty good "Download all my Data" process similar to deleting facebook. Strava's appears to be better because they don't wreck your data the way FB does when they hyper-compress your photos & videos.



This is great info for people complaining about how bad the free version is yet still are contributing members.
Very simple to opt out completely.

[pasadena]

Thanks for pointing out the garmin heatmaps. In this area, they are really sparse. I upload my rides through connect, so I guess it takes more than one person to show up on their maps

I was answering your question about Strava heatmaps.

[p nut]

It's even sillier than that. I've heard riders asking their buddies for "help getting their KOM back." Any KOMs I've ever held were completely anecdotal. Getting assistance to "win" KOMs? Silly...

Greg

Yeah, people are silly in general—on strava or not. Reminds me of those amateur club racers who get busted for doping.

I’ve been playing around with the paid membership features. Some cool stuff. Especially the route planning. That will come in handy.

[pasadena]

It's probably more valuable to people who travel a lot and pack their bike.

it's invaluable for this, as well to help build a ride. Probably not getting used this year for obvious reasons...but it's made precious cycle time very enjoyable when in unfamiliar areas.

[benb]

This is great info for people complaining about how bad the free version is yet still are contributing members.
Very simple to opt out completely.

Well one of the things here is if Strava turns out to be in trouble they may get bought.

If they get bought, your data, pictures, GPS info, etc.. is part of what gets bought.

Think about all the companies who might buy them. Some you will trust, some you will not.

If they actually delete your data when you leave then you might want to delete it. Hard to say, it's hard for me to believe Strava actually deletes all your segment rankings and such if you leave. That reduces their value prop.

I actually think Strava may have so much data they can't fix some of the bugs because they can't figure out how to get through it all.

E.x. they have all these bugs where people have bad segment data that screws up KOMs. You'll see the KOM holder have an average speed higher than their maximum speed.

Well fixing a bug like that involves the following:
- Figure out what code is generating that bad data
- Fix the code
- Write some code to go back through and correct all the bad data

For a database the size of what Strava has "go back and correct all the data" is not quick, and not cheap. They could literally be in a meeting and debating running a job to fix a bug and they have to estimate how much it is going to cost them to run the compute time to fix the bug. If they are in a tough financial situation and they can't prove fixing that bug will bring in some new subscriptions of course they won't do it. One of the big changes cloud computing has brought on is companies become much more aware of how much different operations cost. When you already bought the datacenter, bought all the computers & disk drives, etc.. then it was a sunk cost and you're running the computers anyway and there is no incremental cost to go correct that data. When you're leasing the stuff in the cloud you will literally have to lease out additional resources to run the job.

[mtechnica]

This is an excellent point. Many of our local segments have the leaderboards full with results from groups rides, and you'd have to be an extremely strong/gifted cyclist to make it anywhere near the top on a solo ride.

Makes it that much more satisfying when you beat them lol...

[pasadena]

If
If

well, all the more reason to delete yourself now if that's a concern

[slowpoke]

Here's a longer, critical, but well-informed post on why one should be skeptical of Strava. tl;dr - it's not the first time they've crossed their paying customers.

It’s not that don’t I agree with CyclingTips' Caley Fretz that you should pay for the things you love, it's that I firmly believes those things should also love you back. And through the better part of the Twenty-Teens, that hasn’t been my experience with Strava...

Cyclocosm - On Strava, or The Things You Love Should Love You Back (https://www.cyclocosm.com/2020/05/on-strava-or-the-things-you-love-should-love-you-back/)

[pasadena]

besides the comprehensive history, the only user issue that bothers me is the privacy loss with heatmaps, which they seem to have corrected.
https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015677871-How-does-the-recent-privacy-controls-redesign-affect-my-existing-settings-

and he ends that entire article with this:
"None of this is to say you shouldn’t pay for Strava — that’s your decision, and I don’t have a particularly strong opinion whichever way you end up going. I think it’s generally good that the service is focused again on user revenue, and from a practical standpoint, I’m at a place in my life where a five-dollar monthly fee is essentially meaningless — I think (hope?) a lot of you are, too.

No — the thing that holds me back is trust. As I said in my review all the way back in 2011, I paid for Strava because I believed the company would want to do right by the people who chose to give it money. Strava then did everything in its power to disabuse me of that notion. Borrowing language from Strava’s announcement yesterday, I’m going to need to see a whole heck of a lot more “honesty, transparency, and respect” from the company if that’s a lesson they want me to unlearn."

I don't have that kind of history with Strava. It's always been fine with me, and I've enjoyed using it.


Here's a longer, critical, but well-informed post on why one should be skeptical of Strava. tl;dr - it's not the first time they've crossed their paying customers.



Cyclocosm - On Strava, or The Things You Love Should Love You Back (https://www.cyclocosm.com/2020/05/on-strava-or-the-things-you-love-should-love-you-back/)

[Wayne77]

This is an excellent point. Many of our local segments have the leaderboards full with results from groups rides, and you'd have to be an extremely strong/gifted cyclist to make it anywhere near the top on a solo ride.

Wind too. I will freely admit that I have snagged a KOM or two on days when there is a brutal tail wind. Whether it’s enough to redeem my soul from eternal damnation from doing that I do try to put “*wind assisted” on my ride title :-)

Another angle on the group ride thing...maybe it’s already been mentioned, but I’m very used to focusing on a segment or two at the beginning of the year, somehow eking out a top 10 but then Im also used to falling back down to 200th place every year at the same time after a pro race goes over that same segment (Tour of Utah in my case). I enjoy it while I can :)

[Wayne77]

If we’re talking about all the weird things people do with KOMs, how about “Strava shaming”? That’s hilarious. People find out about some cyclist they think was being a jerk somehow, then in some Facebook group people will go look for that persons Strava profile and post it, then suddenly you have other people saying they’re going to go out there and snag the fellows KOMs just to get back them. Wow. Just wow. I also witnessed this on a Facebook mountain biking page. Obviously people frown upon riding trails early season that are muddy. So one fellow witness a guy riding a trail that was not GTG, logged into Strava to find out who rode that segment that day and posts their profile for public shaming. Again...it’s funny and sad at the same time.

[benb]

Wind too. I will freely admit that I have snagged a KOM or two on days when there is a brutal tail wind. Whether it’s enough to redeem my soul from eternal damnation from doing that I do try to put “*wind assisted” on my ride title :-)


This is just part of the game, it's assumed that's part of it. It didn't bother me.

I have one near my office. I have been competing for it for 4-5 years with 2 guys I know who my work with my wife. (They all work off this road.)

It's a moderate grade hill.. I will typically hit it on the way to the office or on the way back from a lunch ride. It's somewhere between 1/4-1/3 of a mile, 50ft of elevation or something. Not hard. But it has speed bumps, and there can be traffic, walkers, etc.. we were bouncing around with the KOM requiring averaging around 21mph up the hill.

In order for everything to come together to put in a good time up that hill:
- Gotta be on good form
- You need to be warmed up, but not at the end of the ride and too tired
- There needs to be no traffic so you are free to negotiate/jump the speed bumps, cars go so slow over the speed bumps they ruin your attempt
- Absolutely must have favorable wind, it's a windy/exposed area and prevailing winds create a headwind so it's rare to get neutral or helpful wind

It all made it kind of fun.. between the 2-3 of us even if we all rode it once or twice a week you'd only get conditions conducive to beating the KOM a couple times a year. This one was kind of fun too because the conditions kind of negated the ability of a group to give someone a leadout to push the KOM way out of sight.

I always liked segments that start with a 90 degree corner or traffic control... negating the ability of a group to start the segment at 30mph and give someone an artificial boost.

As for shaming that just reminds me of the guy everyone knew was getting KOMs doped and Phil Gaimon went out hunting his KOMs.. that was kind of hilarious.

[tctyres]

With the new changes now in effect, they've moved three features I like behind the paywall:
1. Matched runs, which lets the user see how they compare against themselves on the same course
2. Compared individual results on segments, which is like matched runs but for individual cycling or running segments
3. Training log, which gives the user a quick run down of weekly events.

I'm not sure what I really think about this. I don't want the power curve results or other analytics as I don't really see the point in those because their free analyses are pretty meager. I don't expect the platform to really dig into any of my numbers. I've used Golden Cheetah and read "Racing and Training with a Power Meter," and there is a lot that can be gleaned from power files. All that stuff should just be standard in any analytics package now.

[Keith A]

tctyres -- I mistakenly thought the training log was still there since the link was still in the menu, but it shows you the log in the background with an invite to pay for this feature. I use this tool often :(

[RoosterCogset]

it's invaluable for this, as well to help build a ride. Probably not getting used this year for obvious reasons...but it's made precious cycle time very enjoyable when in unfamiliar areas.

I like Strava and pay for it, and see the attraction of the heatmaps, but maybe someone could tell me if there's a fix or I'm just doing something wrong? If i create a route, I don't see anywhere the cues/turns listed, or any textual listing of the ride showing all of the turns, roads and mileage markers? That is, do I need to export a TCX and put it on my Garmin unit to know what I can expect in the way of turn by turn cues?

I can click on "PRINT" to see some of this (though no distance provided for each leg, only cumulative), though there the issue is that an example route I created, shows up with roughly 65 steps, but of those, roughly 1/3 are interspersed repeat "Proceed on XYZ Street.." which just seem like a waste of space and would be bothersome extra beeps on my head unit?

Anyway, I suppose this is why I also pay for RWGPS as the stuff I've mentioned above isn't an issue.

[benb]

The issue with the route builders is that is actually pretty difficult software to write. Really interesting too though, I'd love to work on something like that. No one is going to hire me to do so where I live right now in a way that lets me make a living & support my family though. And I surely wouldn't have enough time to do it justice a side project.

Most of the offerings for route building are free.

The route builder itself is a side feature, not the core revenue generating item, and most of these products don't bring in enough revenue anyway.

So they never get the attention they need.

Ride with GPS might be the closest to a company that has a core revenue generator based on route building.

Garmin it's just an add on to sell more GPSes, though that actually seems pretty core. (I think Garmin has an issue with bad office location & other factors not attracting top engineering talent.)

Strava it's a side feature on a social network.

It is a really frustrating situation.

[unterhausen]

Ride with GPS wants to be strava, so their route builder isn't that great.

Wonder if they'll reconsider now that the problems Strava is having have been exposed.

[smontanaro]

I eventually gave up on rwgps's route planner. Now I use Google Maps, then replicate its turn-by-turn instructions in the route planner.

I couldn't understand why Google didn't just give users the option of exporting routes in one or more common formats. I now suspect it's because they realize they would kill (or seriously injure) most route-related activity tools.

[benb]

Ride with GPS has the same issue that Strava has just because it's a B2C product. B2C software is a really tough business.

Software is really really expensive to develop once you start having a team & a corporate structure.

B2B products generally:
- Cost a very very large amount (vast majority of software packages I've worked on in my career have been at least 6 figure cost level)
- Have solid business plans with well defined target customers before the project is starting
- Have high product lock-in & clear positive cost-benefit relationship for customers
- Customers can show ROI of the product
- # of competing companies is not that large (high barrier to entry)
- Software used & supported for a long time

B2C Software is totally different:
- Almost a lottery
- Big companies (e.x. video games) spray out a ton of products and hope one hits
- Cost has to be very low
- Market is very fickle
- No ROI at all for customer
- Customers have no lock in and can switch very easily
- The market resembles movie/TV production or popular music production more than it resembled B2B software

This is why you see so much free/advertising supported B2C software and why it's so consolidated into giant companies.

iOS/Android software is a perfect example of this.. the market wants to pay $1 or nothing for software that could have cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to develop.

The thing that can work for B2C is when the company is kept ultra small and the product is really well defined so # of developers & management/marketing/sales overhead is almost eliminated.

The problem there is routing is pretty serious computer science level stuff and there can be pretty decent costs for hosting/serving maps, licensing geo data, or leasing cloud stuff to serve it up. Luckily there is tons of free stuff to build upon these days but it is still not particularly conducive to keeping the team super small.

If you paid $1000/$10,000/yr for your mapping & routing solution they'd probably be amazing. B2B type companies would get in on it.

I'd love to be able to exit the corporate side and run my own ultra small company.. but figuring out the right business idea is harder than building it.

[pasadena]

I don't use a bike computer so it's all on my phone, so it's pretty easy to navigate.
To build a route, I use a more locally popular map service (for example, in S Korea, I use Naver maps) and Google Maps is honestly the best all around map because of streetview.
Those cross ref with Strava- where the heatmaps and segments tell me where all the local riding is- makes it easy to find good routes in new areas.
After that, bumping into local knowledge is pretty easy.

But yeah, Strava has been invaluable for stuff like this.

I like Strava and pay for it, and see the attraction of the heatmaps, but maybe someone could tell me if there's a fix or I'm just doing something wrong? If i create a route, I don't see anywhere the cues/turns listed, or any textual listing of the ride showing all of the turns, roads and mileage markers? That is, do I need to export a TCX and put it on my Garmin unit to know what I can expect in the way of turn by turn cues?

I can click on "PRINT" to see some of this (though no distance provided for each leg, only cumulative), though there the issue is that an example route I created, shows up with roughly 65 steps, but of those, roughly 1/3 are interspersed repeat "Proceed on XYZ Street.." which just seem like a waste of space and would be bothersome extra beeps on my head unit?

Anyway, I suppose this is why I also pay for RWGPS as the stuff I've mentioned above isn't an issue.

[Bostic]

Strava offered too much for too little for too long. Subscriptions are here to stay. I hate them but love them and companies are not going to change that consistent revenue model. Remember when they first came out and they limited you to 5 ride uploads *total* before a paywall? They had to change that or there is no way the company would have ever grown in 2009/10.

Before using Strava I used bikejournal. Manually entering in numbers in fields and saving versus uploading automatically via usb from a Garmin to Strava. It's a no brainer why I stopped using bikejournal.

Stand alone little apps for mobile I will not pay a subscription. Things that impact me at a big level such as Office 365, iCloud storage, Xbox Live I pay the money.

One particular company that basically has subscription marketed differently is VMware. I need to use their Fusion for Mac and Workstation for Windows virtualization products and they charge yearly for the new version. If you don't fork over money then there is a good chance that latest version of MacOS or Windows 10 is not going to work properly. Or you will miss out on other improvements in the product.

[tctyres]

tctyres -- I mistakenly thought the training log was still there since the link was still in the menu, but it shows you the log in the background with an invite to pay for this feature. I use this tool often :(
Right. Just a simple tool, but easy to see what you've done and when.


Software is really really expensive to develop once you start having a team & a corporate structure.

Thanks for all your insights in this thread. They are helpful to understand what is going on.

[fkelly]

I user Ride With GPS personally and coordinate a club area on it for my bike club here in the Albany, NY area. We have about 300 saved routes in our club area, probably using 12 to 20 "standardized" starting locations. Most of the routes have been thoroughly vetted so there is less chance of a wrong turn sending you off into Timbuktu. User can download the route to their Garmin or Smartphone where rwgps provides Android and IOS apps. That way you can get turn by turn directions (read aloud) as you ride.

The routing isn't perfect, but it's pretty good. I looked at Strava routing a few years back and it was terrible. The problem with routing is that all these apps just sent their users mouse clicks off to a routing data provider (I think Google) which then returns turn directions and text. There is no way that these relatively small companies could maintain routing databases by themselves.

For my own riding I put probably 50 to 100 segments (KOM's mostly) into rwgps. Mostly years ago. At this point I have 200+ attempts on some of the segments going back as far as 2012. I'm 73 years old now and not getting any faster but this lets me monitor my rate of decline. That's actually useful for lighting a fire under yourself. (Ha, a couple of weeks ago, I got what I called a double lantern rouge == my slowest time ever on two segments that I had over 100 attempts each on). That got me motivated a bit.

As backup I download my rides and keep summary data in a spreadsheet. There is no telling when one of these companies will go belly up.

I pay rwgps an annual fee (in $50 range with club discount) and have a free Strava account. On occasion I've compared results on similar segments (KOMS's) between them A lot of the same people on both. I can't compete with riders who are 40 years younger and 30 pounds lighter so mostly just compete with myself.

Benb makes good points in this thread about the industry. I've had good luck working with rwgps technicians over the years ... they are a small enough company to be responsive. I've learned that there are real limits to what they can do about routing because they are so dependent on routing data providers. And that's just the way it's going to be.

[FlashUNC]

Ugh - I think I am due at least a little more credit than this in terms of sophistication. Of course, the most heavily ridden routes in dense urban areas may not yield 'good' riding.

Let's run through a hypothetical example. Let's say Joe Rider is going to Ovaro to ride the Zoncolan. He doesn't know much else about the area, but wants to fit in at least one additional climb. He turns on the heat map - boom, within ten seconds he is able to identify the switchbacks of Monte Crostis, within two minutes or so of scrolling he finds the Forcella di Lavardet.

Could he have found Monte Crostis by poring over a normal map? Sure, but it would have taken some time. Could he have found Forcella di Lavardet? Not without spending a lot of time poring over a map and other sources.

I have been fortunate to ride all over the world. I happen to enjoy spending hours cross-referencing strava, maps, google earth/satellite imagery, etc - but I have yet to come across a more powerful single tool than Strava's heat maps for identifying good riding. This works pretty much everywhere the world over at this point (just don't go stealing my KOM in Bhutan, ok?).

If you have a suggestion as to what would work better, I am all ears.

I've gotten more useful ride info out of talking to other riders here and other places than I'd get on Strava.

So, I dunno, how about online forums for starters?

[pasadena]

I've gotten more useful ride info out of talking to other riders here and other places than I'd get on Strava.

So, I dunno, how about online forums for starters?

https://i.gifer.com/7MAx.gif

[FlashUNC]

https://i.gifer.com/7MAx.gif

If the company's biggest selling feature after a decade in existence is a leaderboard for segments that have gotten people killed and a heat map software that's a privacy nightmare, and you've not managed to monetize any of this data, then maybe the company should be put out of its misery?

Invisible hand of Adam Smith and all that.

Fire sale to Garmin for pennies on the dollars in under 12 months.

[barnabyjones]

I'd subscribe for $1.99/month. I pay $9.99 for Spotify and that includes content (audio and Hulu) along with royalty payments, as tiny as they are. The amount of time I spend on Spotify is about five times greater than Strava. Although I'd rather ride my bike than listen to music.

[pasadena]

I'd subscribe for $1.99/month. I pay $9.99 for Spotify and that includes content (audio and Hulu) along with royalty payments, as tiny as they are. The amount of time I spend on Spotify is about five times greater than Strava. Although I'd rather ride my bike than listen to music.

You answered it yourself.

Cost per hour does not equate to value, especially when it comes to your hobbies, passion, and what matters.

[kiwisimon]

I just stopped Strava and Veloviewer. It was a nice distraction but I'm not a competitive cyclist, my ego is big enough and it also doesn't need any more bruising. Strava tells me nothing I really need to know. I have Garmin Training Center for comparisons and it is fine.

[tctyres]

Somehow, they made everything a lot less fun. It's really too bad.

[smontanaro]

I'm just a free user and see most things I'm interested in have disappeared behind the paywall.

One thing I've never found is how to see monthly mileage. I can only find weekly totals. Are monthly totals available anywhere in Strava?

[kytyree]

There is a rolling 4 week total on your profile. On that page is also a bar graph, you can toggle it to "monthly" or "weekly" for a total. You can then click on the bar graph to change months or weeks, or switch between time, distance, and elevation gain.

I've been paying for Strava for a while, I'll continue to do so and that's fine with me. I keep all my own totals in a spreadsheet, I do like looking at some of the training stuff on there but mostly I enjoy keeping up with various riders around the world and my friends who don't live near me. We could do something similar on other social media but I think it is nice to have the sports separated from the rest of that, at least for me.

[makoti]

I just stopped Strava and Veloviewer. It was a nice distraction but I'm not a competitive cyclist, my ego is big enough and it also doesn't need any more bruising. Strava tells me nothing I really need to know. I have Garmin Training Center for comparisons and it is fine.

If I could drop Stava & keep VV, I would. As it stands, I'll have to see how much info is taken out of VV now that the free version is so striped down

[FlashUNC]

I gotta say, Strava's made major mistakes in the last few years ignoring platform updates, screwing the pooch on user privacy, and generally alienating a loyal, committed fanbase, but man they sure have nailed the near daily emails asking me to pony up for Premium over the last week or so.

All of the ambiance of a political contribution email, none of the charm.

[unterhausen]

They must know I'm a hopeless case, no such emails

[pasadena]

No such emails for me either. Only emails I get from Strava are comments notification that I requested.
I gotta say, Strava's made major mistakes in the last few years ignoring platform updates, screwing the pooch on user privacy, and generally alienating a loyal, committed fanbase, but man they sure have nailed the near daily emails asking me to pony up for Premium over the last week or so.

All of the ambiance of a political contribution email, none of the charm.

[MattTuck]

Everything they're trying to push is done better by someone somewhere else. Route planning? Komoot. Training plan tracking? Uh, pick the list: Training Peaks, etc etc.

The leaderboard is THE reason Strava is Strava. Paywalling that is just moving the deck chairs around imo.

Agreed. Given the cashflow that I thought they were generating from subscriptions, I have been really underwhelmed by their features over the last 5 years. They've had plenty of time (and venture money, btw) to come up with 'the next big thing' to add to/replace the leaderboard.

The thing that gets me is that their user forum (atleast when I followed it) had a ton of great user generated ideas. And none of them were pursued.

leaderboard is just depressing for me anyway.
True also. As someone on here said about powermeters, paying for the leaderboard functionality would be like a poor person hiring an accountant to add up all their money.

[smontanaro]

There is a rolling 4 week total on your profile. On that page is also a bar graph, you can toggle it to "monthly" or "weekly" for a total. You can then click on the bar graph to change months or weeks, or switch between time, distance, and elevation gain.

Thanks. Even with your guidance it took me awhile to find the setting, since the bar graph you mentioned was "below the fold." I kept looking at and poking the horizontal bar graph further up the page on the right side. I was beginning to think that choice of time interval was only available to paid users. :)