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Facebook sees Gen Z boost after relaunching ‘poke’ feature

Once a staple of Millennial internet use, Facebook has reintroduced the long-defunct ‘poke’ feature to its platform, allowing users to mildly annoy one another at their leisure.

If you’re a Millennial, you probably know exactly what we mean when discussing Facebook’s long lost ‘poke’ feature.

Although simple, the ‘poke’ button allowed friends to flirt with one another, receive attention, or simply keep up a long-running gag for the thrill of it. There was nothing else to it besides simply notifying the recipient, but it was fun – and popular – well over a decade ago.

Although it never technically disappeared for good, Facebook buried the ability to ‘poke’ other users via a niche search term many years back, meaning that you had to go out of your way to find it.

Now, in a recent UI update, it seems the company is slowly soft-launching ‘poking’ back into the mainstream.

So far it seems to have been a hit, with Meta reporting a 13x surge in ‘poking’ between users. What does that actually mean in real terms? We’ll let you be the judge of that, as Meta hasn’t given specific metrics just yet.

However, what we do know is that more than 50% of new ‘pokes’ have come from users aged 18-29.

This is interesting given that Facebook usage is in decline with young people, especially Gen Zers who perceive the platform to be for older folks and misinformation memes.

Anyone under the age of 25 probably doesn’t even remember ‘poking’ to be a usable feature on Facebook, let alone a popular form of nonverbal, online communication as it was in its heyday.

It’s surprising that Meta hasn’t explored revamping features such as ‘poking’ prior to now.

Given that some of its biggest competitors – Snapchat in particular – place a strong emphasis on ‘gamifying’ their user experiences with ‘streaks’ between users, it seems like a long-standing missed opportunity to bring younger audiences back on board.

Should we expect Facebook to lean further into more playful features going forward?

Perhaps the brand is hoping to move away from being regarded as a formal, cranky, and news-centric space. It’s been a long while since younger consumers shared much on the platform besides major life milestones for their grandparents to see, after all.

If you’re interested in ‘poking’ your online friends (and why wouldn’t you be, frankly) all you have to do is search their name. You should see a poke option next to each profile, at least on mobile.

Failing that, you can always take a peak at Facebook’s dedicated ‘poke’ page. Your friends will pop up in an exhaustive catalogue that is somewhat reminiscent of a victim list, but we digress.

It’s nice to see a little fun brought back to Facebook’s outdated and bland platform. Let’s hope it continues to test more lively ideas and actual socialising in the coming months and years.

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