Chances are that if you cycle a lot that you have at least heard of Strava which offers some similar features to that of Google’s My Tracks, even if it isn’t your main app for tracking your cycling data. Today, the Strava team is updating their app to include a new feature that was previously not available in mobile form. It’s called clubs, and it’ll be a way for users to become more social with others that also use Strava. Clubs promote friendly competition as well as discussion and sharing interests with other members, and there are even club leaderboards which are updated weekly so users can see and track their progress to compare against others as they progress week by week.
Finding clubs that a user may want to join sounds rather simple, and Strava says that when users go to look for clubs to join that they’ll be able to see the different clubs that are available based on location, as it will show you clubs that are nearby. Users can also directly search for clubs by name or by the type of sport they’re interested in, and results here are are also location-based. For users who are already in clubs, they can invite others to join, which should come in especially handy for those who may have just convinced a friend to start using the app and join the club they’re in.
For those that want to take the social aspect beyond the Strava app itself, clubs can be shared through other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and really anyone can start a club discussion which should open up the clubs to a wide variety of discussion topics. Aside from adding the Clubs feature to their mobile app, Strava explains that they have also improved the interface for the app too, and Clubs can be used to set up group activities where Club members can either participate in a competition or meetup. Group activities can be for a single situation, or they can be set up so they’re recurring if the plan is to hold the same activity around the same time every week or every couple of days. At the moment, setting up group activities can only be done from the website, but it will be introduced to the mobile app in the near future. Strava’s Android app update should be live, which holds compatibility with Samsung’s S Health app.