Strava and Snapchat Team Up for Social+ Fitness

Strava synced with Snapchat to make activity tracking more social.

What’s happening: Snapchat unveiled a Strava Activity Lens. By linking a Strava profile with a Snapchat handle, workouts are available as an overlay to photos and videos.

Additional features include sharing a slideshow from your camera roll through Memories, with the ability to narrate over each clip. Snapchat has also enabled a recording lock, allowing users to capture the moment hands-free (i.e. mounted on a bike or “selfie” stick).

Why it matters: While photo and video sharing is already a part of Strava, its 100M users are more likely to share the activity tracker’s stenciled route map than first-person footage.

By syncing with a media-first social platform, Strava is courting Snapchat’s 363M daily active users while adding more engaging, story-like content.

Pedaling content. In March, Strava inked a “storytelling” partnership with the Tour de France. In addition to successful broadcast exposure, Strava CEO Michael Horvath spoke to the platform’s ability to tap into the cycling world’s biggest name for inspiring, first-person content.

“In 2022 alone, we saw 80% of the men’s peloton and 89% of the women’s peloton upload their race stages to Strava for fans around the world to follow.”

Besides elite performers, with stats-as-content, the new Snapchat Lens will significantly boost user-generated media and add a whole new element to the community’s phrase “Strava or it didn’t happen.”

What to watch for: Leveraging its recent integration with Oura, biometric data—from max heart rate to stress levels—could become the next photo overlay. What’s a privacy concern to some would be a hyper-personal flex for competitive athletes and everyday exercisers alike.