UKC

Strava has been trying to push subscription for a while now, and I have ignored it. Now, it seems to have forced me onto a one month trial and it doesn't seem to show me anything from any of my friends! 

What is the point of it if I can't see what folks have been up to? I like to see what adventures folks are having!

So, what other platforms do people use for this sort of thing? I don't need any "training tips" etc, I just want maps of where I have been, how long it took me and where were my pals out playing today. 

I subscribe to Strava, and I definitely see what my 'Strava friends' (people I follow) have been doing. I think there must be something wrong with your set up currently. 

The free version of Strava has been getting steadily and deliberately crapper for years now, in an attempt to push people into subscribing. Loads of things like leaderboards and previous runs are now hidden. I wouldn't mind paying for it but I use it probably around twice a month or less and there's nopayment or subscription model that makes economic sense for occasional users.

Unlike you, I'm an unsociable git and don't concern myself with what friends are up to, but I do like to know how I'm getting on compared to last year or ten years ago on the same routes, and very little of that is still possible without paying around £4 per run for it.

I think I had the same experience as for a month or so the presentation was different both on my phone & PC & seemed to show more information. But like you I ignored it all & it has now gone back to 'normal'. I'm not interested in training or what my friends are doing and just want to know distance travelled & height climbed either on foot, cycle or ski.

ps to add that I keep a separate spreadsheet of activities (just date, route, distance, height climbed, started this before I started to use Strava) so hadn't noticed that I can't see old entries.

I'm confused, I hardly ever use strava now I'm not road biking regularly, but looking at the app I can see all my friends activities. I can see all my friends activities too. There is a lot of other functionality in the paid version, but I have never subscribed to that. They seem to be turning it into Facebook for amateur athletes. 

Edit: this is on android mobile

Mapmyrun seems to be pretty good at the mo, but all I use if for is to time my run (and it gives me audio splits).

It seems to be showing friends activities this morning, so maybe it was just having a blip! 

Still, I won't be paying for it! I couldn't care less about all the fancy training data, I just want to know where I have been and what my friends are doing. I only have real friends on there, I don't follow randoms

Komoot?  

And call me an old frat but I don’t want an AI description of what I’ve just done. I can work it out for myself thank you.

yeah, definitely getting older and grumpier….

Everybody hates that. I had to Google how to turn it off, it was a popular search!

The latest annoyance is a congratulations screen every time I finish an activity. Like I'm a 5 year old. Does anyone know how to get rid of it?

I'm currently on the paid version cos I got it for free, but won't be paying for it when it runs out. The only useful thing in the paid version is the ability to compare previous runs. Nice, but not £60 a year nice.

Thanks for the tip. I'll check it out.

Have just been purchased by private equity and fired 85% of their staff

Yes its not looking good given Bending Spoons (the purchasing companies) history with Evernote etc.

Agreed, the general " shitification" of services. Paying more for less.

You now have the torture of watching Temu adverts to access your Evernote.

Still angry that Strava bought the well respected Fatmaps and then shut it down!

Vulture capitalism!

"You will own nothing and be happy" is an often misrepresented slogan from a few years ago that appears to be coming to fruition.  Some conspiracy theories have a habit of coming true

I don’t subscribe but see every tedious foam rolling session, lunchtime walk and school sports day mum’s race that my acquaintances do…

It's tedious because if somebody follows you, you then feel obliged to follow them and I don't really care what they do. I'd rather just train secretly and have no desire to give somebody's morning yoga session kudos etc... 

a good trick - in settings / privacy controls, change activities to "only you". That way, nobody sees any of your activities and you will fall off everyone's radar. You then don't feel obliged to dish out any kudos because, as far as all your followers are concerned, you are not exercising or using the app.

If you do anything epic that you do want to share, just maek the activity public in the edit function

Who do you think pays for Strava's running costs?

I'm extremely happy that Strava charges a subscription so that they don't have to rely on the advertising and data mining that funds most social media .

I suspect the data mining will continue even if you are a paid subscriber...

Sounds good to me. Ta.

Does Strava have advertising on it? I don't think I have ever seen it. 

I assume everything online is stealing my data, I don't think there is a way around that if you are online. 

I presume they have made enough money for all of these years they have been running for free, so what's changed?

yes but its more stealthy than the traditional advertising we see for example on UKC, many Strava challenges have sponsors. They have a whole site dedicated to attracting business, which explain it.

https://business.strava.com/

Thats not how online businesses work, they lose hundreds of millions of dollars while being funded by external finance for years trying to achieve a monopoly, only then do they start charging. 

Ah, I don't look at challenges. Tbh, I don't notice advertising on UKC either. Maybe I am a bad capitalist citizen!

Oh, well, I won't be paying. It's not worth it. It's nice to see what my pals have been doing (they don't all put photos on Facebook, which is my other way of seeing what folks have been up to), but I don't care enough to pay for it. 

The only app I pay for is Outdoor Active as I get full OS maps and Harvey's maps. 

Strava seems the same as ever to me - maybe I've just failed to botice the attempts to get me to pay.

Duolingo does a similar thing.

Try fitotrack. Free and open source. It doesn't do the look at me crap that Strava does, but sounds like half the people here don't want that anyway and if you do you can use the share button.

This is what I was going to suggest to the OP.

I'd be surprised if a spreadsheet wasn't the clearer way of displaying how you are doing over time and as you decide on the formulae yourself, you can calculate an almost infinite number of stats tailored to your individual needs, graph all the results and overall just have a much more informative analysis of the output.

And if you are not great at spreadsheets, it's your chance to get better - yay, 2 birds with one blunderbuss!

I've not used Strava but I'm familiar with the "make the entire experience progressively crapper till the users pay for a subscription" approach which is used by a huge number of apps. I am sympathetic towards the approach from the pov of the provider - they are not a charity and they need to work out some way of generating revenue, a company can burn money for many years as long as huge growth continues but _eventually_ investors run out of patience. The fundamental problem is that users have become accustomed to getting software for free in today's world (at least personal software, not so much business stuff) and it isn't free to create or maintain. Maybe one day there will be a single subscription that is then distributed by popularity to the providers of apps, like happens to musicians and record labels if you have a music liscense.

I agree it isn't free to build, run, store data etc.. but I think many people want the basic service of various apps, not all the extra near pointless guff and fluff they add then double the price. It's clever marketing for the gullible  like stravas challenges, kudos, segments, local legends....

They are definitely monetising your data, regardless of whether you pay a subscription. I’ve been offered services that are underpinned by Strava data.

Don’t know what GPS you’re using but I get all that for nothing from Garmin Connect with my phone connected to my ancient Garmin 235.  I’ve got a kind of archive which lets me compare today’s route with how I did on the same run x years ago. I also subscribe to Outdooractive for the mapping, and my Garmin data syncs to Outdooractive showing me where I’ve been, how long for, how fast(or realistically how slow) on a proper map. One of our younger club members was recently extolling the virtues of Strava but I don’t know that I’m going to bother after reading this thread.

Are you a Russian spy, trying to locate US military bases?

I’m not currently subscribed and I can see my friends’ activities. I got back to biking and thought I’d subscribe again, but the price has gone up to 8 quid a month and I cannot justify that at all…

It needs funding somehow. Users voted against ads, so subscriptions are needed. Things are not free to make and maintain.

You can disable it.

Strava has no ads and has integrated all of the fatmap functionality into the premium mapping service. Not sure what your issue is here? 

They sell data to city planners etc to help with active travel provision. Hardly big evil capitalism.

I'm a subscriber, as well as subsidising all you UKC freeloaders, I do so because I find the training metrics very helpful.

I don't think you can see OS 1:25,000 maps in Strava - which is what I used Fatmaps for. (Would be very happy to be proved wrong though!)

They could give you an option, free but with adds or subscription without adds. 

I couldn't care less about adds, I just ignore them and scroll past. 

Yeah, I don't "train". I go for adventures and enjoy seeing friends' adventures  

I don't use Strava, the free Garmin Connect provides enough functionality for me, although they are pushing the paid upgrade hard now too.

It will annoy me if that functionality degrades - I feel the amount I have paid them for devices warrants basic analytics when I use their ecosystem.

Or perhaps a good capitalist citizen who absorbs the messages without noticing?

As I’m old and facing decrepitude I need to train so that I can continue to enjoy my adventures.

You don't need Strava to train.

Sure smart arse, you don't NEED Strava to train, I just find it helps me and I like using it, is that OK?

Indirectly, I am alluding to their fascinating heat maps:

https://www.strava.com/maps/global-heatmap?hl=en-GB&sport=All&style...

US service people seemed at one time to be making a presumably unintended contribution to these:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracking-app-gives-aw...

 

Out of interest what is this premium mapping? I'd like to have a play while I've still got a subscription, but I can't find anything in the app apart from the usual Strava heatmaps and segments.