When Facebook launched in 2004, it offered the ability to “poke” your friends to get their attention as a virtual boost — and the feature has been the subject of debate ever since. Was it an annoying or low-key way to say hello?
Although it has lost visibility (and popularity) over the years, to celebrate Facebook’s 20th anniversary, Meta hopes to capitalize on nostalgia for the retro practice by bringing back the ease of “poking.”
And like the twenty-year cycle of fashion, it seems to be back in fashion. In a Threads post, Facebook revealed that there has been a 13x increase in poking in the last month.
“I teased Prisiclla and now we’re married,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg joked in response, speaking about his wife of nearly 12 years. “Nature is healing.”
Facebook said so TechCrunch that in recent weeks the social media platform has made it easier to find the poking information page more easily, as well as adding a button to poke a person as soon as their name is searched on the platform.
When users type “poking” or “poke” into the Facebook search bar, the Poke page will appear.
The company also said that more than 50% of recent pokes came from a younger group of users aged 18 to 29.
Furthermore, a recent report from the New York Times found that Generation Z has become more active on Facebook thanks to the platform’s Marketplace feature, where users can buy and sell new and used goods with no commissions or online transactions required.
The Marketplace currently has over one billion monthly active users and by 2022 Statesman study, it was the second most popular online destination for resold goods (eBay was first), even surpassing Craigslist.