13 December 2023
Here’s a quick round of notable new sports tech things in the last 24 hours or so.
New Strava CEO Appointed:
After a 10-month search, Strava has announced the name of their new/upcoming CEO – Michael Martin. He will replace Strava co-founder Michael Horvath, who announced he was leaving the company this past winter. His departure was preceded by an uproar over Strava’s lack of communication around price changes, which the company eventually apologized for.
Looking at Michael Martin, his most recent gig is YouTube, specifically YouTube Shopping. Prior to that he was at Nike for of 6 years. A quick career page includes:
May 2022 to present: YouTube, GM/VP of Shopping
Oct 2020 to May 2022: Nike, VP/GM, Nike Marketplace Greater China
Oct 2019 to Oct 2020: Nike, VP/GM, Nike Direct Greater China
Oct 2016 to Oct 2019: Nike, VP, Global Head of Digital Products
Mar 2013 to Sept 2016: NBC Universal, SVP NBC Digital Product & Engineering
Jan 2008 to Mar 2013: Disney ABC, VP, Technology
At Nike, he was in the fitness team as the product leader for Nike Run Club, Nike Training Club, Nike Adapt, and Apple Watch Nike+. It appears his tenure was well after the Nike Watch. Remember that?
Now, I don’t know Michael Martin. Or, at least I don’t think I know him. Maybe I met him back in the Nike days at some point. Either way, we don’t really have a ton of data to go on in terms of the direction he wants to go in. There’s obviously been lots of fear today in forums/Twitter/etc that given his YouTube background, he’ll turn it into an ad hellscape. Of course, I’ll note that countless people have actually been asking for an ad-supported option for Strava for years. While I’m not one of them, there’s plenty that would prefer that to opening their wallets. To each their own.
However, as someone who is in the rather unique position of actually using the YouTube Shopping platform as a ‘creator’, it’s…umm…not great. YouTube Shopping is essentially the feature below a video that lets you see a product (e.g. an Apple Watch) and then get redirected to a site (e.g. Walmart) to buy it. The YouTuber then gets a standard affiliate commission, varying between 0% (not kidding) and 20%. Most are 1-4% for the category I review.
Yes, YouTube Shopping has gotten better in the past few months, but overall there’s nothing about it that scales terribly well for creators (which, is what matters here) based on my using it for the past year or so. Not to mention that data insights are minimal to non-existent, and clarity around products and relationships even less.
Now, this isn’t meant to be a post about YouTube Shopping – I lose enough of my life already trying to add/find/remove products to old videos. Instead, it’s meant to point out that I’m happy to give any CEO a clean slate when arriving at a new company. There’s countless reasons why YouTube Shopping could be the reasons it is today, including forces working against him (above or below him). And of course, inversely, some of the work he did at Nike is very good, especially around the integration with Apple – building a strong community there of people that really love Nike Run Club
The point is, I’m eager to see what he might do at Strava, yet at the same time – I kinda felt like Strava was really starting to (mostly) find their groove on new features over the past 8 or so months. Thus, only time will tell what happens next. He’ll officially start his new role on Jan 2nd, 2024.
New Zwift Features:
Today Zwift announced a number of new features in their seasonal ‘This Season on Zwift’. Albeit, many of these have unclear timelines or dates, but, at least we get some clarity into what’s coming. I’ve linked GPLAMA’s video above covering them.
However, in particular, I want to zero in on one thing: Apple Watch heart rate support returns. This feature allowed you to use the optical heart rate sensor in your Apple Watch as a heart rate sensor for Zwift. This was killed off two years ago, when Zwift deemed it unreliable (setting aside countless other fitness companies, including Peloton, made it work just fine). In any case, rather than try and fix it, they removed the feature…except for those that had already enabled it – who got to keep it.
Well, turns out what’s old is new again, and Zwift is back at it. Starting at some point this winter (the exact phrasing I got is “next couple of months”), you’ll get back your Apple Watch optical heart rate data. In asking Zwift about this, the feature is coming back because Zwift says there is changes in WatchOS10 that make it viable for Zwift to bring the feature back.
WatchOS10 was announced this past June at Apple’s WWDC, and then officially hit production release in September. It included a host of features related to sports/fitness, including cycling power meters, cycling sensors, and structured workout support. In fact, if Zwift wanted to, they could technically even route the power meter support via Apple Watch. Though, I see zero upsides to doing that from a latency standpoint.
In any event, WatchOS10 is available to Apple Watch Series 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, Apple Watch Ultra 1/2, and Apple Watch SE 1/2.
Apple Watch Siri Health Integration:
Finally, we’ll end on a quickie – also related to Apple Watch. Which is that with the latest version of Apple WatchOS 10.2 and iOS 17.2 released today, you can now talk to Siri and ask health/fitness related questions that pull from Apple Health on your phone (that’s the database that holds all of your medical/sports/fitness/health data on your phone).
Note that the first time you ask it a Apple Health related questions, it’ll ask you to authorize it (using your fingers, not voice):
Apple has given various examples of questions you can ask – and log, including:
Example questions you can ask:
“Siri…”
“How does my Move ring look today?”
“Did I close my Exercise ring?”
“What’s my step count?”
“How far have I walked this week?”
“How far did I bike yesterday?”
“What’s my heart rate?”
“What’s my blood oxygen?”
“How much did I sleep last night?”
“How much have I slept this week?”
“What’s my blood glucose level?”
“What was my blood pressure yesterday?”
Example things you can ask it to log:
“Siri…”
“I took my 8 a.m. medications.”
“Log that I took my multivitamin.”
“I weigh 167 pounds.”
“My period started today.”
“Log that I have spotting today.”
“My blood sugar is 122.”
“Record my blood pressure as 118 over 76.”
“Log my body temperature as 98.3 degrees.”
Personally, I’d like a bit more sass in the answers. I want a ‘Friday night 2AM still at the bar Siri; for some of these questions. Ask it how recent workouts have been trending and it fires back that your trends “look like you’ve been hitting the cake too hard” or that sleep trends “appear to involve less time sleeping and more time horizontal shuffling”. Maybe someday.
Till then, I’ll just get back the usual answer that I didn’t sleep enough.
With that – thanks for reading!