In the recent years there has been quite a few stories about companies which endured privacy scandals. Mariott hotels (2018), Twitter (2018) and Facebook (2018 & 2019) are just a few scandals most people would know about (Information is beautiful, 2019). While it’s good that those compvanies have been shamed in public and have to pay an enormous fine, it’s sometime better to focus on some stories as well.
Strava is a tracking app for your sports activities. With an enormous userbase, which are currently creating 8 million activities each day (Strava, nd), Strava processes a tremendous amount of private data. Even though most of the people who read this will think back to how Strava uncovered a military bases, the way how they process, treat and sell your data is actually admirable.
Strava has a really transparent business model, which includes three sources of revenue. Firstly, Strava has an premium account option, for the people who think that the fee version is not good enough. Secondly, Strava sets up partnerships with companies like Zwift, which is a gaming company and develops software for spinning bikes. In this way, people can ride their bike in Milan, Barcelona and New York all in the same week. Lastly, Strava sells, like a lot of other companies, the data they collect. Of course, they gives you the opportunity where you can change settings for sharing your data. Moreover, Strava lets you opt out for the data sharing of your heart beat data. Ethical data collection is, however, not just giving people the opportunity to opt out or say that they don’t have to use your services. It’s more about what companies do with their collection of data. Strava, in contrast to others, never sells private data. Strava set up a service, Strava Metro, where buyers can take a look at all the data combined, which leads to massive amount analysable information. Most of the time, Strava sells their service to local councils and cities, who then can analyse what happens in their city, what can be improved, and what should be newly build. This leads to better, new infrastructure making sure their users can enjoy more beautiful and safer activities (D’Alessio, 2018; Gulley, 2014)
Sources:
https://medium.com/bestcompany/how-strava-makes-money-amazes-me-92ae7bfdc633
https://www.outsideonline.com/1923291/stravas-plan-revolutionize-commuting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strava
https://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/worlds-biggest-data-breaches-hacks/
Great article! I wasn’t aware of this. If all companies would be transparent about which data they collect and what they do with it, the world would already be a better place. Do you happen to know why they partnered up with Zwift specifically? Do they leverage the data of the sport activities of the Strava users and turn it into a competitive advantage for Zwift within the gaming industry? Or does it has nothing to do with their data?
I don’t know why they partnered up with Zwift. Can imagine it was just about a strategic partnership, enhancing both Zwift’s business model and Strava’s business model.