Strava has just announced a slate of updates at their annual Camp Strava event, where they show off a bunch of newness. This year’s event is the first time new CEO, Michael Martin, is at the helm, after starting back in January – and he appears very keen to say ‘there’s a new sheriff in town’. And I’ll give them credit, their little 82 second teaser video is hilariously well done – it’s simply their CEO sitting there, reading mean social media comments…and agreeing to them!
In total, there’s a slate of things coming, some more concrete – and some a bit more fuzzy. Here’s the quick-hit list, and then I’ll dive into the nuances a bit more down below:
– Adding new family plan for up to four family or friends in a group (except, the pricing is TBD)
– Adding mobile app ‘Dark Mode’
– Adding night heat maps to show which routes are better/safer for night workouts
– Adding new quick edit feature to edit workout details
– Adding new “Athlete Intelligence” feedback, akin to basic coaching feedback on activities
– Adding “AI-Enabled Leaderboard Integrity” to sniff out improbable uploads
All of these things are coming from what Strava says is a revamped development process within the company, with them specifically saying it’s using an “updated design system, an initiative that is integral in driving a heightened pace of product innovation at the company.”
The new CEO of Strava, Michael Martin, goes on to say:
“We are focused on two fundamental shifts to accelerate how we deliver value to 125 million people globally– building for women and leveraging Artificial Intelligence – which will unlock new community-and-partner-powered experiences across the platform.”
Of course, as always, the proof will be in the pudding. Virtually nothing announced today is actually available today, it’s all coming sometime between “this summer” and “later this year”. Thus, let’s dive slightly deeper.
The New Bits Detailed:
The company announced these updates via both a press release and an on-stage event. Neither are super deep in their technical details, however some pieces have more clarity that others. Let’s start with the most financially interesting one: Family Plans.
Family Plan:
The new family plan will allow up to four people to join together under a single paid membership that has all the same rights/features as an individual membership. Further, you don’t need to live at the same address. Strava specifically notes that it can be any four people, as long as they’re within the same country (and aren’t already members). In other words, you could find three other ride buddies and split the cost between yourselves.
Strava has actually posted a detailed FAQ page on this already, covering a slate of questions – minus the most important one: How pricey? The company says they’re working through the details on that, and this will start rolling out to select countries this summer.
The family plan is only offered as an annual subscription. If you’re already a subscriber, you can cancel your current subscription and then join a family group. You won’t lose any data/features/etc…
This could be super interesting – and I think really appealing for a lot of…well..families. But also a lot of other friends of mine that don’t bother to have paid subscriptions for Strava, as they don’t use the features often enough. This might nudge them over the edge. Or, inversely, it might cause a bunch of really clever cyclists/runners to simply band together and split the bill. It’ll all depend on the final cost.
Dark Mode:
This is a simple one. Strava says this summer they’ll roll out the widely requested ‘Dark Mode’ feature to the mobile apps, which will automatically utilize your device’s overall light/dark mode settings. Here’s a pretty picture of it they included:
See, that was easy?
Night Heat Maps:
Next, the company is adding night heat maps, which will tell you which routes are better at night, specifically between sunset and sunrise. The company put this under the category of “Build for her. Build for many”, which is a set of initiatives that, while aimed at women, are applicable/useful to many more.
In the case of the night heat maps, here’s how they describe them:
Night Heatmaps show only activities between sundown and sunrise – so athletes can get an idea of which roads, trails, and paths are well-trafficked after hours. Since Night Heatmaps filter for after-hours routes, it can be a helpful tool for female athletes training before sunrise and after sunset.
Again, this would be super useful, and frankly really cool to see the data – both for riding and running. Once you live in a given location long enough you tend to have your favorite night routes. But I’d be keen to see which routes I never visit at night, are actually quite well visited. Should be super interesting
New Quick Edit Feature:
This next feature is a bit fuzzy, at least at the moment. It’s titled quick edits, and I’ll once again let Strava explain it:
“For active women, having control over what is shared with the Strava community that cheers them on – like what time a run is logged – is important. Quick Edit makes it easier to make the most common edits – like activity name, and privacy settings so you can hide your start time, your map, or other workout stats.”
My guess here is that this will make things a bit more one-tap, rather than digging though a slate of menus for some of these features. We’ll have to see of course.
Athlete Intelligence:
Next, there’s a whole slate of coach-like features, which are going to look at your activities and then provide feedback/thoughts on them, looking at trends and other areas. Here’s some screenshots the company released:
In it, you can see the system at the top, which the company notes is very much not an AI chatbot like seen on Whoop or other platforms, but instead asks specific questions (“What’s your focus this week?”), and then follows up with specific responses. You can ask it to “Say More”, as well as see further details. You can see how it’s pulling in existing data that Strava displays today, assumedly in a more visible manner than stats buried deep in pages you might not ever visit.
Having AI-powered something is of course all the rage for tech companies. I appreciate that Strava isn’t just adding another useless AI-powered chatbot that constantly gives you poor training advice, but instead seems to be tapering expectations and reach.
AI Leaderboard Integrity:
Last but not least, Strava has announced a new “AI-Enabled Leaderboard Integrity” system that’ll try and find more incorrectly tagged e-bike rides and airplane flights:
“The first of these updates, AI-enabled Leaderboard Integrity, will harness machine learning to automatically flag irregular, improbable, or impossible activities recorded to the platform. Trained by millions of activities, this feature allows all users on Strava to play fair and have more fun.”
It’ll be interesting to see how this goes. I’d hope this is some initiative that has been on a back burner for a while but somehow continually delayed. After all, users have been begging for this stuff for like a decade, so I’m not clear on what’s suddenly changed. Well, except the new CEO. Which, may be the singular reason this is finally happening. Here’s to hoping!
With that, this looks like a very solid start to things people actually want. Since we’re asking – can we finally get grouping for triathlon data into a single cohesive activity, as opposed to split into five activities? I mean, just asking for a friend.
Thanks, and thanks for reading!
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