Strava Messaging – Completely Pointless
“I just sent you a message”
Well, you might have done but which of the many existing messaging systems did you use?
What Is Strava Messaging?
Strava Messaging is a follower-only messaging facility within the Strava mobile app.
For now, you can only send simple messages, activities and courses to individuals or groups.
Subscription is not required. To some degree, this will ALWAYS be a subscription-free feature.
Where’s The Spam
Strava Messaging should be spam-free as you can only receive a message from followers and you can fine-tune that further, like this:
- Following: Anyone you follow will be able to message you.
- Mutuals: Only people you follow and who follow you back can message you.
- No one: No one can message you first but you can start chats with others.
You can see from those settings that this feature is not targeted at allowing casual followers you just met to message you.
Take Out & Thoughts
The problem with platform-dependent messaging, like iMessage, is that you can’t communicate and plan with your cycling mates with a phone that uses the other platform (iOS/Android). That’s why all my cycling groups swallow their dislike of Meta and use WhatsApp, perhaps your cycling groups use another method. The point is that all of us have already worked out a way of planning rides, communicating and sharing ride-based information (routes).
Strava Messaging is an unnecessary invention. It doesn’t, yet, add anything materially new into the mix to incentivise its use.
Furthermore, it requires every rider to use the Stava app.
Here’s where you jump up and quote the stats that about 17 trillion people already use Strava. Well, I’m sorry, they don’t. Sure the 17 trillion people installed the app at some point but it’s not intrinsic to a large proportion of them and their cycling lives. Thus if you send a message to one of those people they won’t get it until hours or days after the ride when (if) they review their ride stats.
Strava obviously knows that. There are some highly intelligent people working there.
This feature is one of those creeping, incremental ones. You know, one day you’ll be in some group somewhere around a table sipping an infeasibly strong espresso and you’ll be the odd one out, the one not using it. You’ll be group-shamed into changing your ways.
So. Strava Messaging is perhaps not completely pointless as I said at the outset. Rather it’s “mostly useless” as of today. One day it might, just might become highly useful and a highly integrated Strava feature that encourages wider usage and interaction with the app. THAT is the point.
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Strava messaging is for the people who you don’t have any connection to except on strava. Right now the only way to communicate with those people is in public comments on activities.
ty
yes I was going to add something along those lines in too.
ultiamtely it is a community feature, it’s about building communities and social interation. Its sole (strategic) purpose is to increase our interaction with the strava app to the point where subscription seems more valuable. No doubt subscriber only features will be added…such as the ability to use emojis
Subscriber only features in the chat would be the Discord approach to getting paid, and it’s probably the least bad of them all: instead of refusing features to those who can’t or don’t want to pay, offer ways to show off wealth to those who can and do.
But I don’t expect this to happen, Strava appears to be rather focused on its core (atvleast if you consider that core “fitness”, not “cycling”)
It’s hugely useful, even if just to set up communication in other channels without making contact details public. For Strava it’s a risky step though, because if much of what happened in comments moves to chat, the platform will have less UGC for everybody else.
As for “only if/when they check ride stats”: well, there are push messages and unlike certain other apps (I’m looking at you, meta) Strava offers a generous amount of meaningful subset configuration so that it’s not really necessary to force them silent on the OS level.