"But the new scheme doesn’t ­fundamentally change the business model or solve the platform’s free-rider problem. Strava’s increasingly social-centric user experience is built around content that’s mostly included with the nonpaying membership."

"That increase in content means there’s more reason to check the app."

"The goal is clear: in Strava’s drive to own social fitness, it wants to be completely agnostic about what active means to its users."

"“We think Strava plays a role for people not just when they’re recording an activity but before and after, right?”"

"“You can find routes, you can find groups to join, people to go with.” Then, once you post the activity, you can talk about it, post photos, tag friends, and memorialize and relive the event."

"But arguably no brand is more closely associated with social fitness than Strava."

"That’s partly due to the fervor of its users."

"The platform’s lure is that it combines the best aspects of other fitness apps—plus some distinctive features of its own—in a sleeker, more satisfying user experience."

"the leaderboard, which keeps track of every athlete who attempts a section of a ride or run route, called a segment, and ranks their personal records."

"The leaderboard gamified fitness by measuring users’ efforts not just against their own PRs, but also against their peers’."

"“But in doing so, you develop leadership and the credibility to build it into a broader market.”"

"Metro aggregates de-identified user data—like which routes you walk or bike, how often, and at what time of day—and sells it to state and local governments and transportation-planning organizations."

"The choice that helped drive its stunning growth—and may ultimately limit it—was to make many of Strava’s features free to all."

"The company says that runners are still its fastest-growing category."

"in Strava’s drive to own social fitness, it wants to be completely agnostic about what active means to its users."

"Jeroen Stragier, a senior researcher at Ghent University in Belgium (and Strava’s 1,038,884th user), looked at how social feedback encourages users to increase their interaction on a given platform."

"the value of a social network for fitness and that it isn’t solely, or even mostly, about comparing performance."

"The 2015 study collected activity data on more than 4,500 public Strava profiles and found that social interactions (likes, replies) spurred users to post more activities"

"The 2017 study, published in the journal Health Education and Behavior, went further, finding that activities posted on Strava were roughly eight times more likely to receive some form of social feedback than a post on Twitter."

"activities posted there have a higher likelihood of feedback"

"The basic form of social currency is the kudo, a kind of attaboy awarded for posting an activity."

"I like having it all in one place,"

"In fact, despite differences from broader platforms, Strava increasingly looks and feels like a social network. That’s intentional."

"the idea was to create a virtual locker room for you and your friends. It was built on the same social psychology used by Facebook and Snapchat."

"As with many tech products, there’s always the lurking possibility of a vulnerability that Strava’s creators never considered."

"by zooming in on Global Heatmap—Strava’s geographic representation of the location and frequency of users’ activities—anyone could see the outlines of military bases and discern activity patterns of personnel on and around the base."

"Summit is Strava’s largest and most important revenue source, with “the greatest potential for the near term,” says Quarles, who calls Strava “overwhelmingly a subscriptions business."