Originally Posted by
WhyFi
They've yanked some stuff from the Free version, but what history do they have of making sudden, radical changes to Premium content? I really haven't taken advantage of a lot of the Premium features, but I'm tangentially aware that they've been adding quite a bit of it.
Radical changes to the API that result in breaking 3rd party applications has the potential to effect both Free and Paid users. Less than a year after Premium was released (c.2012) Strava made similar drastic changes to the API and broke platforms including Wahoo and CycleOps (
DCRainmaker, 2013). Back then at least, the community was given a month's notice.
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Overall, it seems like Strava might get what they want out of this -- an immediate and significant uptick in subscriptions. Whether or not they continue to grow the userbase thereafter is an open question. For more casual users, noticing what features are now missing might take a few more days, and transitioning to alternatives might take even longer; new users may never see the use of Strava from the free version, making it more unlikely for them to become subscribers.