If you've experienced being poked on social media, particularly Facebook, then you might already be having back problems now. It has been years since the poke feature was a thing, and people are suddenly using the button to bug people again.
Newfound Attention on Facebook's Poke Feature
No one really knows the exact purpose of the feature, but it's probably just a way to subtly say "hey" to other users without actually typing and sending the words. Even though it hasn't been used in years, Facebook kept the feature. Now, users seem to find it interesting again.
The Facebook account on Threads posted in all caps, "THE POKE IS HAVING A MOMENT," also saying that there has been a 13x spike in poking on Facebook in the past month. "So, be honest: who's poking who?"
It's unknown why it suddenly saw a surge in activity, but Gizmodo reported that there have been a few small changes that might have urged users to try it out again. It's now easier to find the poke page by typing it in the search bar on the social media site.
The page will show you both Pokes and Suggested Pokes, with the former containing the list of people who poked you first, along with the option to Poke Back as the button appears on the right side of their names.
There is also a suggested list of people you can poke for fun, most of which will be the people you interact with most on both Facebook and Messenger. You can scroll down as far as you can until you go through all your friends list.
Poke on Facebook
The feature has been around since Facebook became publicly available in 2004, which means that some users might even be hearing about it for the first time. Even then, the poke button was not often used by Facebook users.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg thought of the function himself, wherein the button would even let out the sound of a guy saying "poke." Fun fact, that guy is actually Zuckerberg, and it's just a recording of him that you can still listen to right now on SoundCloud.
The tech CEO already acknowledged questions about the button that seems to have no clear use. "We thought it would be fun to make a feature that has no specific purpose." He also asked users to "mess around with it," because they were not getting an explanation from the company.
Back in 2012, Facebook also tried to launch a Poke messaging app, which would allow users to send photos and other messages that would automatically expire in seconds, as reported by Forbes, just like Snapchat. Since that app does not exist now, you can tell that it did not last.
One of the app's creators said that Poke was developed in just 12 days and that although it was still launched, it didn't last very long. Regardless, Meta is still successful in other forms of media that are similar to Snapchat, such as Facebook and Instagram Stories.
