18 May 2023
Yesterday, Strava held ‘Camp Strava’, a physical real-world event where a bunch of people gathered together to talk about Strava. This seems to be vaguely developer focused, and vaguely regular athlete focused. The schedule had a host of non-technical things on it, including a run and happy hour. But did include a keynote, where Strava’s outgoing CEO discussed the company’s history, followed by a more technical session outlining a host of new features coming to the platform over the coming months.
The technical section of the presentation was done by Misha Gopaul, founder of FatMap, which is a company Strava acquired earlier this year. His new title at Strava is “VP of Product”. He explained that some things were going live within the FatMap app today, while others would be consolidated to the Strava app by the end of the year. It sounded like the goal was to have everything consolidated by the end of the year, but that part was a bit fuzzy. Either way, here’s the new thing and where they sit now.
First up, is that immediately within the Fatmap App, you can look at all your existing Strava Routes, including in 3D fly-throughs of every route. With the plan for this to be part of the Strava app by “the end of this year”:
Further, they’re expanding the idea of the heat map. To begin, you can now filter where people have been riding in just the past week. Or skiing in just the past week (such as for late season skiing). They went onto say that they want the app to adapt to “whatever question you have”, citing examples of:
– Being able to instantly overlay the “official Swiss [trail/mountain] map” in the app
– Being able to see/overlay where sun will be on the mountain (side) throughout the day
– Being able to overlay avalanche risk profiles within the mountains onto the map
– Show how much snow has fallen in the last two days
– Show which ski lifts are open at that moment in time (live data)
You can see some examples here (sorry, it was hard to snip this out of the presentation, so kinda low-res). Maybe Strava will publish or send over some higher-res pics I can swap out.
Above, left to right: Skiing heatmap for last 7 days, sun exposure in mountains, , Swiss map overlay)
And below, left to right: ski lifts currently open (live data), and avalanche risk via temp
Next, Strava is revamping their route planning creation engine, adding “AI”, as they stated. The new engine adds many more variables, such as asking for popular rides, but alternatively asking for ‘new’ routes that you haven’t done before. You’ll then get a selection of routes, again focused on being “the best” route, rather than the fastest or shortest.
The new routes page has been re-designed to more prominently display photos and community insights (such as which friends have done it recently, or other random people too). After you’ve selected a route, it’ll also offline store both the route as well as all the map data on your phone, in case you’re using the Strava app for routing.
Next is a new “Official Routes” platform. This will allow brands/businesses/organizations/cities to publish official trails. For example, a ski resort could publish a list of official mountain bike trails. Same goes for an event organizer, like Ironman. Or Rapha for bike routes for group rides.
That ties into ‘Route Collections’ – either for yourself, with friends, or create themed collections. The idea being that you could create a collection for a trip, ones around a given destination, such as hiking trails around Chamonix. Or mountain bike trails at a given park.
I’d find this super useful myself, as people visiting Amsterdam are always asking for my favorite routes. And the same was true in Paris when I lived there (and even made an entire page of routes). This approach is much cleaner, and more akin to what Komoot has.
All of the routes and maps, including the 3D fly-throughs will soon be embeddable in 3rd party websites:
Next, over “over the next year” Strava says they’re “completely rebuilding” the way Strava groups work. They say they’re shifting towards more of the ‘community’ aspect rather than it being built around leaderboards. In other words, most clubs aren’t really about Strava Segment hunting. Instead, they’re about a group of people either sharing rides, or using like routes, or some sort of commonality. The first phase of that is the new group page launched last week:
The idea being you can plan events, routes, and also managing people RSVP’d for a ride. Further, when you RSVP to the event, the route is now “seamlessly” integrated, into the persons account. Further, there are group heatmaps as well:
This becomes a group ‘interest map’ so that you can easily see where others in that group are running/riding. Next, they’re adding better video support into the apps and groups in particular, including soon the ability to add YouTube videos into group posts.
Strava also says they’re expanding the limits of group challenges from 25 members to 500 members. This frankly still seems silly small for any larger groups, but hey, that’s where Strava wants you to then use their sponsored challenges.
Finally, Strava says a new Nike partnership is coming. Albeit, details are thin. They say “within a few weeks” Nike members will have the ability to share their Nike Run Club & Nike Training Club activities to Strava, effectively like any other normal activity (including kudos/likes). It sounds like Strava will release more details in the coming days on this.
Now, if you want to watch the full keynote – you can do that here, below. Though I promise, I’ve got all the good bits listed above.
Additionally, there’s also the Vimeo livestream of the rest of the day. I haven’t watched that (and the video seems kinda broken), but looking at the agenda, that doesn’t appear to be focused on the Strava platform, as much as more athletics/community. Maybe you’ll find a fixed link elsewhere on Twitter.
Anyways, looks like some pretty cool new features – looking forward to giving them a poke once they’re out. Outside of saying ‘by the end of the year’, there wasn’t much of a timeline on most of the things announced.
With that – thanks for reading!