Strava Pushes News/Ads To The Feed

by editors on November 30, 2016

strava_betaclub

We always hoped the next major advance at Strava would be better, easier ways to message and communicate with people we follow (Strava Messenger?), instead Strava is rolling out what they are calling Beta Clubs. On the surface these “clubs” appears to be nothing more than a news providers. Here’s how Strava is over pitching it:

The Beta Clubs mark the first time that content other than an activity could show up in your feed, which is a big step toward serving every need of the athlete. That’s an ambitious goal, and no doubt we’ll be learning and iterating along the way. But we’re up for the challenge, and these Beta Clubs will help lead the way. Only these clubs can post for now because we trust them to be awesome — they are going to show us and the rest of the Strava community what it means to run a great club. They’ll set the standard, and it won’t be long before we open the ability to post content to all clubs and athletes.

The Beta Clubs include popular media, retailers, and product brands Like Bicycling Magazine, Bike Radar, Canyon Bicycles, USA Cycling, Rapha, Clif, and Competitive Cyclist (that’s just seven of the twenty-seven brands listed). Users can “join” the clubs they want to get news from. Then each time the companies blast out “news” it will show up in the feed between rides.

While getting news from brands we care about might be interesting, this really looks more like a revenue generation play by Strava that will eventually lead to feeds clogged with irrelevant advertising.  We sincerely hope this doesn’t happen, because we really like Strava. It is our Facebook. And if it becomes as annoying as Facebook we’ll be forced to purge it from our lives and that would be a serious bummer.

How do you feel about the new Beta Clubs? Let us know in the comments.

[Link: Strava Beta Clubs

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