Strava and Relive are partners no more
Life has become much more complicated for Relive, the popular third-party app that lets you replay your rides in glorious 3-D detail using the power of Google Earth, as well as for the thousands of athletes that currently enjoy the service.
Strava recently announced that it had terminated its collaboration with Relive, citing “recent updates” from Relive that supposedly violated the terms of Strava’s API agreement.
“These terms are in place to safeguard your personal information, to ensure a level playing field for all our partners, and to protect what makes Strava unique,” read Strava’s official statement. “We’ve worked hard with Relive to try to fix this, but they have ultimately chosen not to make the changes needed to honor their agreement. So as of today, Strava will no longer send your activities to Relive for playback.”
There are always two sides to every story, however, and it seems apparent that there’s some underlying conflict here that Strava’s statement may not fully bring to light.
Shortly after Strava’s notice went out, Relive sent one of its own.
“We thought we had a thing,” it said. “Until last week. After launching our first social features, we received a very unexpected message threatening to pull the plug. Given our long-term partnership, we immediately rolled back the changes like they requested.
We then tried to call, email, and talk this out with Strava. No response, except for new ultimatums and threats about our existing features they’ve applauded for years.
“Nothing has changed about how Relive uses and protects your data or how we use their API.”
Relive also made it clear that the platform is still fully operational, and you can continue recreating your rides in 3-D just as before; it now likely just requires a bit more work to do so. Since Strava isn’t sending the data directly, Relive users have to import from another platform, like Garmin Connect, or directly import the ride data from their GPS device.
Where does the truth lie? Somewhere in the middle seems likely, but either way, it’s, unfortunately, the end users that suffer.
Official statements from Relive and Strava
Here’s a piece of the official statement from Relive. Find the rest on Relive.CC.
“So, this sucks… Strava decided to no longer work with us and shut down our access to your activities. This means you can no longer create Relive videos based on your Strava activities.
We thought we had a thing. Until last week. After launching our first social features, we received a very unexpected message threatening to pull the plug. Given our long-term partnership, we immediately rolled back the changes like they requested.
We then tried to call, email, and talk this out with Strava. No response, except for new ultimatums and threats about our existing features they’ve applauded for years.
It’s sad to see them suddenly go and we’re bummed about this, just like you. We like Strava’s product and we’ve been working with them for more than 3 years.
Nothing has changed about how Relive uses and protects your data or how we use their API. We’re working to make sure you can keep your current and past activities on Relive. We believe this is your data and you should decide how it’s used. After all, it’s your legs doing all the work!”
Strava’s statement has not been published online, rather it was emailed to users.
“Many of us at Strava have enjoyed using Relive over the last few years, but because of Relive’s recent updates, unfortunately, we have decided to end this integration. The current version of Relive violates several of the terms that we ask of API partners. These terms are in place to safeguard your personal information, to ensure a level playing field for all our partners, and to protect what makes Strava unique. We’ve worked hard with Relive to try to fix this, but they have ultimately chosen not to make the changes needed to honor their agreement. So as of today, Strava will no longer send your activities to Relive for playback.
Rest assured, nothing’s changed about how your information is stored or the control you have over how it’s accessed by API partners. And we remain deeply committed to helping our many API partners build experiences that make your workouts and races even better.
As always, thanks for being a part of the Strava community,
The Strava Team”
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