About a decade ago in a Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg once wrote “we thought it would be fun to make a feature that has no specific purpose.” He was describing the much-ridiculed Facebook “Poke” button which was retired but now may be making a bit of a comeback. The thing people simultaneously loved and hated about it was that it was so hard to explain. What is a poke? Was getting one a good sign or not? And what should come after a poke to keep an online conversation going?
No one ever really had a good answer. So why is the poke experiencing this resurgence? One article suggested that “by reimagining one of its classic social interactions that made it fun, Facebook aims to stay relevant and appealing to younger audiences, while reintroducing them to a slice of its heritage.” Maybe that’s true. Or maybe there’s a subset of Facebook users who will simply click the button that is presented to them just to see what it does.
