How Strava Leveraged Privacy for Growth

Last year Strava, a popular fitness app for tracking and sharing outdoor runs and cycles, adjusted app settings to offer users more privacy. Prior to the update, they already offered ‘privacy zones’ around user’s home and offices to allow people to keep their personal locations hidden, but the update expanded the existing scope of privacy controls, specifically:

• Expansion of the privacy zone setting included:
  - Hide start and end point for activities
  - Hide activity maps entirely
  - Privacy zone range expanded up to 1 mile or 1600 meters
• Capability to hide heart rate, calories, pace, or power

The update also allowed users to hide their stats from other users, which can be particularly useful for those training competitively. To learn more about the nuances of these updates, check out DC Rainmaker’s in depth video.

These changes reflect many users’ desire for privacy from other people, which we saw in our own research last year on consumer attitudes towards privacy. Survey respondents generally reported that they did not want their information shared.

What this Strava update did not address, however, was our other respondents’ concerns about companies’ data collection and selling practices. Strava is transparent about the fact that they aggregate user data and share and sell it with third parties. For instance, the Oregon Department of Transportation recently paid Strava $20,000 for their data to improve bike routes in the state (Gourley, 2021).

Strava could potentially consider this a positive use of their data since it has the potential to improve bike routes for its users, but it’s unknown how users feel about their data being shared and sold for this purpose. And just because they clicked “Agree” to Terms and Conditions when they downloaded the app, does this feel like a consensual use of their data? What sort of privacy controls to offer is a frequent debate and it appears that Strava has prioritized privacy settings between users, instead of user controls over how their data is shared or sold beyond the company.

Nonetheless, the privacy updates seems to have benefitted the company by increasing app usage:

“Strava’s co-founder Michael Horvath says the app’s improved interface, privacy and free Strava Beacon for non-subscribers also led to increased usage of the app” (Portus, 2021)

This can also be verified by the fact that Strava saw a 38% increase in app usage last year and added an average of 2 million users per month (Portus, 2021).

This is a positive indicator that focusing on privacy might be helpful to other companies hoping to expand their user bases. Do you know other examples of companies who have used privacy features as a driver for user growth or retention? Comment with them below.

Resources

Gourley, J. (2021, November 17). Do You Know Who Owns Your Strava Data? ACTIVE.Com. https://www.active.com/cycling/articles/do-you-know-who-owns-your-strava-data?page=2

Rainmaker, D. C. (2021, August 13). Strava Adds Major New Privacy Zone Features, Plus More Privacy & Map Options. DC Rainmaker. https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2021/08/strava-new-privacy-zone-features-options.html

Ricker, T. (2021, August 31). Strava’s live location tracking service is now free. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/31/22649880/strava-beacon-live-location-tracking-map-data-privacy

Portus, S. (2021, December 10). Strava Year in Sport 2021 report | 38% increase in activities with 1.8 billion uploads. BikeRadar. https://www.bikeradar.com/news/strava-year-in-sport-2021/

Strava. (2020, September 23). Strava announces Strava Metro, the largest active travel dataset on the planet, is now free and available to cities everywhere. Strava. https://blog.strava.com/zi/press/metro/