Pro Cyclists, Updated Dashboard, Comments and More!

We have a big release this week with so many improvements that I couldn’t fit them all in the title – really, it’s that awesome.

Pro Cyclists

Cycling pros Tim Johnson (Cannondale-Cyclocrossworld.com), Ted King (Liquigas-Cannondale), Craig Lewis (HTC-Highroad) are now on Strava! We’re excited to have them onboard, and have given them their own Pro Cyclist Profile pages. Go check them out and follow their exploits around the globe via Strava rides, blog posts, tweets and more. Make sure you fan them and drop a comment or two!

Improved Commenting and Kudos

Previously, adding comments to a ride was not exactly easy or intuitive, as many of you have pointed out. We’ve been listening! If you check out the new Pro Cyclist Profile pages you’ll notice an improved commenting system, as well as a way to quickly give out kudos. Now you can add kudos and comments to any activity in your dashboard feed, as well as on the Ride page (Ride>Ride Report), and your Club pages.

Updated Dashboard

There are some other improvements that we’ve made to the dashboard. Along with an improved activity feed with comments and kudos, we’ve also added a “share” link that lets you share a ride on Facebook, Twitter, via email or by embedding a Strava Widget on your website or blog. You can also see all the Pro Cyclists in Strava on your dashboard, making it easier to find and follow them. And we’ve added thumbnail Google maps to each Strava ride in your feed to give you more information about your and your friends’ rides on your dashboard.

Widgets

Another popular request we get is for ways to share your Strava rides directly on your personal blogs or websites. As of today, you have any easy way to do that. If you want to blog about an epic ride you did over the weekend, you can add a Ride Widget to that post with a map and summary information about that ride. It’s a simple as copying and pasting a small code snippet into your blog post. You can grab your ride widget code on your ride page, by clicking the big “Share this Ride” drop-down menu on the right and choosing “Embed a widget” from the options.

You can also show more dynamic information about your rides in Strava with the Athlete Activity and Summary Widgets. The Athlete Activity Widget displays the last 5 rides you did and updates whenever you upload new rides to Strava. The Summary Widget shows your total distance, time, elevation gain and number of achievements (KOMs/QOMs/PRs) for the current week. You can get the code for these widgets on your Profile page, by clicking the “Share your Rides” button under your profile photo.

Segment Filtering

Today we are also turning on strong segment filtering for everyone. This is a project we’ve been working on for a while – behind the scenes – to address the problems that occur when there are too many segments for a ride. I won’t go into all the details about how this works here, because it deserves its own blog post (Mark will  post one on it soon). In short, we use an algorithm to determine which segments are popular and then hide those segments that are not popular. As we continue to collect more information about which segments people like, the filtering will get more intelligent. You can still see “unpopular” or hidden segments, by clicking the “Show all segments” link at the bottom of the segments list. And of course, you’ll always be able to see your own private segments.

This is the second big step in trying to rein in rides with lots of segment noise – and the first step towards letting the Strava community decide which segments are worthy and which are not.

Golden Gate Bridge Elevation Correction

Strava uses a USGS elevation database to correct poor elevation data for cyclists in the US. Strava members who ride in the San Francisco Bay Area with a non-altimeter device have probably noticed that they get an elevation boost when they cross the Golden Gate Bridge. This is because the USGS elevation database doesn’t “see” bridges. We now have the ability to mark a segment as a bridge, in which case we’ll zero-out the elevation gain for that segment. This is the first step in leveraging our own data to patch elevation data. Look for more innovation in the future. Also, let support know if there are bridges in your area that we should define.