Strava has just announced the addition of new types of content onto their platform, including “stories, photos, questions, gear tips, race reports, recommendations, workouts – all kinds of content in addition to activity uploads,” according to their release.
For now, though, these new types of content will only be available to 36 professional athletes, with the new features rolling out to all users sometime this summer.
Strava claims that they can now be the “home of your athletic life.” Essentially, Strava will start looking more like an athletic blogging platform. The release continues:
This is a leap forward in our plan to build a place where you can find everything you love about your sport. Strava is already where millions of athletes go to record activities, track their training and connect with their friends. Now it can also be where you discover the perfect half marathon. It can be where you share awesome photos of your summit sunrise or slick new bike. It can be where you ask other cyclists about the best tire choice for your next MTB vacation. It can be where you share your homemade energy bar recipe, your all-time favorite trail, your tips for fixing a busted IT band, a new article on running across Africa, stories from your latest adventure vacation… we can go on and on. Starting today, Strava’s going to look more like that place.
Strava claims that “you can leave all the political rants and cat GIFs behind on other social networks,” and while maybe that will be true, with the introduction of all these new features, the simplicity and limits are being removed from the platform. What will stop the pro athletes and self-obsessed friends you follow from sharing their political rants on Strava too?
For now we’ll have to wait and see how this plays out. Despite clicking on several of the 36 athletes mentioned in Strava’s blog post, I wasn’t able to find any of these new stories yet live on Strava. And this is just a soft launch–the real test will be when these features roll out to all users.
Stay tuned: your Strava feed will be changing very soon!
