Anyone who was a Facebook user in the early days of the social platform (at least when it was a global platform, not just one limited to students) will remember Facebook Pokes. Poking someone on Facebook (oh, do grow up!) was a wordless – slightly creepy – way of interacting with another person.
A Soke did not really serve any purpose beyond reminding someone of your existence in a somewhat passive-aggressive way. Having experimented with reviving the Poke, Facebook is having another go at making the idea relevant in 2025. This is more than just the return of the Poke; this is the Poke on steroids.
Facebook insists that “Pokes never really left”, going on to tease that “they’re making a comeback in a major way”. The social media giant took to another of its platforms – Instagram – to draw attention to the existence of facebook.com/pokes. The URL is real, it works, and it is where you can expect to find everything Poke-related that you could ever hope for.
The return of Facebook Pokes
The company says that the page can be used to “see who poked you and find other friends to poke”. So far, this is nothing new. But Facebook goes on to talk about the new features. As well as the option to “Dismiss Pokes”, there is a game-style element to the reimagined Poke:
See your Pokes-count with friends grow each time you poke each other.
Which is all well and good, but the question on just about everyone’s lips is going to be ‘why?’. Yes, talking about Poking someone is a delightful double entendre – but it is a joke that wears thin pretty quickly. Yes, a Poke is another way to try to get someone’s attention, but surely there are enough methods already – even if you’re limiting yourself to Facebook.
In the Poke announcement Facebook also encourages users to “Poke, connect, stay in the loop!”, saying:
Now you can poke your friends directly from their Profile and learn about new activity through notification.
This is at least the fourth stab Facebook has had at the Poke feature, and it is hard to say what has driven the decision to bring it back now. Was the world crying out for its return? No. It could be a distraction from all of the artificial intelligence Facebook is throwing about, an attempt to show people that as a social platform it can do simple things (very simple things) as well.
Does anyone care? Will anyone care? How long before Facebook stops flogging this dead horse?
