I know the Strava “missed connections” feature has been around for a while now, but somebody recently pointed this out to me:
Is this “Go To FlyBys” button new?
Available only via the web browser interface. I get the feeling this was rolled out just during this past week, but I could be wrong.
The Strava FlyBys feature allows you to find the Fred you stomped all over, or the over-aggressive Cat 6 who stomped all over you. And I know a couple of people who have used FlyBys for potential hook-ups. I’ve successfully used FlyBys to connect people to San Jose Bike Train.
That has been part of labs.strava.com for a while. It will be interesting to see if they add more links to lab projects.
Check the Chrome extension, Stravistix, to get more data and other links added to your ride pages.
I don’t like that I can’t turn it off or exclude myself from it. It’s a little creepy that just anyone can find you that was riding near you. I want to believe that most people are solid and not crazy, but you just never know. I’m not generally a paranoid person, nor someone who is overly concerned about privacy, but as someone who uses Strava purely for my own tracking, it would be nice to be able to exclude myself from certain portions of Strava.
As for the flyby’s appearance, I believe it just appeared in the last week or so as you stated. It may have been available prior to that, but it’s just become part of the main page recently.
As @eroseboom notes, the feature has been around for a while in the labs, but they just added a link to the regular site very recently.
However, VeloViewer.com has had a link to the flyby feature in its activity listing for some time now.
As mentioned above, you could go to labs.strava.com and paste in your activity URL in the “Activity replay” to see the same thing for while now. The button right on the activities is new though.
I just noticed this recently too, and while it’s fun to see, I think I’m with G.E. on this… may be a little TMI for some of the less emotionally stable individuals on the Internet.
I use flyby after every ride. They added a few features on it too (like select all). I was on Strava a few times over the last week and noticed it popped up sometime in there. Before flybys, I used Sufferfest, but that only worked if Strava linked your ride with others (so you had to have ridden together for a bit, not just crossed paths), or you could add other ride links, but you would have needed to know them – you couldn’t just stumble upon other rides. Anyway, I love the feature.