Strava is taking one huge step nearer to turning into a true social community, because the fitness-tracking platform introduces in-app messaging to let customers ship non-public one-to-one and group messages.
The brand new messaging characteristic, which is offered to each free and premium subscribers, goes a way towards unifying all the things in a single app, so budding athletes can coordinate actions with out having to context-switch between Strava and third-party messaging apps like WhatsApp.
By means of the little speech bubble icon on the top-right of the app, customers can provoke a chat with anybody of their community, or begin a brand new group which might be personalized with its personal identify.
Strava: In-app messaging Picture Credit: Strava
Social membership
For hundreds of thousands, Strava has turn into the de facto exercise monitoring platform for recording and analyzing rides, runs, rows, and dozens extra actions. However over its 14-year historical past, the platform has morphed into one thing extra akin to a social community, permitting customers to search out and share routes; work together with teams; publish images; touch upon buddies’ actions; and provides kudos.
In lots of respects, Strava could possibly be described as a “Facebook for fitness.” However the precise “social” options have at all times been restricted — sometimes, the extent of a social interplay on Strava can be commenting on a pal’s exercise, or giving them a “thumb’s up” (kudos). Issues get a bit extra purposeful in Strava events and clubs, that are principally non-public teams with permitted members who can chat on dialogue boards and obtain notifications for brand spanking new messages.
However prior to now, buddies utilizing Strava would sometimes need to take their discussions “off platform” to prepare logistics for a weekend bike experience, or to share info that they don’t need to be within the public area. With messaging built-in, Strava hopes to alter that.
“Our community will now be able to coordinate adventures, connect for inspiration and tips and share their journey — all on one platform,” Strava’s chief enterprise officer Zipporah Allen advised TechCrunch.
Strava has a button that hyperlinks on to the person’s saved routes, whereas it additionally serves a content material preview of the route instantly within the message, constructing on functionality the company rolled out final month. And particular person actions will even now have a sharing possibility, so customers can share that 5km run to a non-public or group chat instantly from the share button connected to that exercise.
Share an exercise Picture Credit: Paul Sawers / TechCrunch
Customers can set their very own preferences in phrases who can message them or invite them to a gaggle chat — this defaults to no matter their profile visibility is. For instance, if their profile web page is restricted to “followers,” then Strava will restrict the messaging characteristic to “mutuals,” which implies solely customers who observe one another can message one another.
Nevertheless, this may be adjusted within the settings, making it attainable for a person to maintain the profile visibility setting as it’s, however permit “following,” “mutuals,” or “no one” to message them.
Messaging: Settings Picture Credit: Paul Sawers / TechCrunch
Sticky
In-app messaging was one in all Strava’s most requested features and has been marked as “under consideration” for a while — some have even taken to starting a petition to get Strava to construct the characteristic.
It’s maybe stunning that Strava has taken this lengthy to deliver messaging to the fray, however its choice to take action now could be indicative of the place it’s at as a enterprise. Strava has raised north of $150 million in enterprise capital funding since its inception 14 years in the past, and people backers might want to see some return on their funding in some unspecified time in the future — so the clock is ticking for Strava to determine some kind of exit route, be that an IPO or an acquisition.
Put merely, Strava must get its ship so as and make itself as interesting as attainable, whether or not that’s for the general public markets or a company suitor. And that may contain making itself as “sticky” as attainable for customers.
“When developing features, the guiding principle is how it connects back to our mission — to motivate people to live their best active life,” Allen stated. “On Strava, it’s really important to get the authenticity in the connection right so we took our time with beta testing of this feature to get it right for this first iteration.”
Strava launched a confusing and convoluted pricing upgrade earlier this 12 months, one which didn’t appear to stick to any kind of uniform technique — it trusted issues like once you joined; which area you reside in; and whether or not you pay month-to-month or yearly. However by means of instance, a typical U.S. buyer noticed their annual subscription bounce from $60 to $80 a month, with the month-to-month charge rising from $8 to $12 — a reasonably chunky 50% hike.
That sort of improve, with out gaining any significant new options, will probably be powerful for a lot of customers to swallow, customers who would possibly beforehand have ignored their $8/month sub to help a service that they like, even when they’re not actually getting a lot from the premium options. And so that’s what Strava has been making an attempt to deal with — for instance, it acquired 3D mapping platform Fatmap in January, which powers a brand new characteristic that shows historic actions via 3D video flyovers.
The messaging characteristic suits that narrative, besides it’s not restricted to premium subscribers. It’s designed to make the platform stickier, encouraging networks and teams to kind inside Strava itself and negate the necessity to share cellphone numbers and take their communications to WhatsApp. This “network effect,” which has benefited many different social networking platforms earlier than it, might assist Strava improve time spent within the app and, finally, cut back churn.
It additionally suits a broader narrative we’ve seen elsewhere within the social realm, with Fb’s dad or mum Meta noting the trend away from large public platforms and information feeds towards smaller, non-public areas — that is why Meta purchased WhatsApp all these years in the past, an funding that has but to actually pay-off, however which looks increasingly prudent amidst Facebook’s slow decay.
Message reactions in Strava Picture Credit: Paul Sawers / TechCrunch
Enhancements
It’s value noting that Strava messaging is just not as feature-rich because it could possibly be although — whereas it helps message “reactions,” it presently doesn’t allow photo-sharing. That is one thing the corporate says will probably be coming in early 2024, alongside different options comparable to the flexibility to share golf equipment and occasions instantly in messaging, replete with content material previews. The corporate additionally plans to deliver messaging on to Strava Golf equipment sooner or later, permitting customers to provoke non-public conversations round particular themes associated to that membership.
Different notable limitations embody the variety of individuals permitted in a dialog — Strava’s group messaging characteristic has an higher restrict of 25 individuals which, whereas probably adequate for many situations, will preclude bigger working and using teams from networking. This compares to an higher restrict of greater than 1,000 group members in WhatsApp, which additionally started supporting theme-specific communities as of final 12 months.
Elsewhere, Strava messaging doesn’t embody helpful options comparable to learn receipts, so it’s unimaginable to know who has and hasn’t learn a message in a gaggle chat. And for many who care about end-to-end encryption (E2EE) as present in standalone messaging apps like WhatsApp, Strava if once more discovered wanting.
“As we expand the capabilities of Strava, our focus is on creating a seamless and engaging athlete experience,” Allen stated. “While our current messaging feature does not include end-to-end encryption, we have implemented robust security measures to protect user data.”
Strava’s new messaging characteristic will probably be rolling out by way of an replace beginning right now.
