Facebook is trying to make poking cool again. That’s right — the feature that allows you to “poke” friends on Facebook to get their attention, flirt with them or just start a poke war has been resuscitated from the depths of Facebook’s cumbersome interface.
Poking was one of the original features of Facebook, dating back to the platform’s beginning in 2004. But like all trends, poking eventually faded into obscurity, buried deep in Facebook’s navigation. However, in the ever-cyclical world of digital culture, what was once old is new again.
Facebook announced on Tuesday that it recently made updates to the poking feature, from improving the platform’s suggestions on who to poke and how to even find the poking page in the first place.
And guess what? It’s working. The company said these changes have led to a 13x increase in poking in the last month. In particular, Gen Z seems to be taken with the feature, as Facebook shared that more than 50% of pokes are coming from 18 to 29-year-olds — a surprising number considering most of them weren’t on the platform (or alive) when poking was at its peak.
