Inside Facebook: the Facebook Book

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You should Poke her

Filed under: Uncategorized — by karel at 5:55 am on Tuesday, May 8, 2007

What’s a facebook poke, and why is it important?

Initially FB was very successful at helping people hook up, or find sex friends, which apparently is a big deal at Harvard. As I write in the book, the first version of mobile had an easter egg all about sending your room number if you’re in that mood.

So Poke was a way of showing interest. Now it seems no one know what it means, which is why it is the awesome yet tremendously underused feature.

Poke is: a) a temporary friendship, b) a high visibility and low pressure way of getting attention. As such, it has no conceptual rival in the social networking space. Facebook should promote it, so I go out of my way to revive Pokey. If you create a group dedicated to him, I’ll join it and promote it.

Pokes appear prominently in the top right of the “Home” page view, and don’t go away until you act. Poke allows the other party to see your profile, to gauge interest by themselves in contacting you, so a mutual poke is a temporary friendship. Since friending is rarely undone, even when it should be to prevent friend dilution, it is nice that the poke expiry requires no action. I’d like to be able to archive friends, the same way I’d like to archive FB messages, when I’m not actively involved with them.

Poke just means “look at me”, whenever you like. It’s nice and polite. Go forth, and Poke.

4 Comments »

Pingback by Facebook poketology at Bratku

November 26, 2007 @ 11:58 am

[…] I have to admit I am fascinated by facebook poke. And for the very simple reason – poke is a very social thing that did not and does not exist outside of social network context. […]

Comment by Salese

January 6, 2008 @ 3:29 am

Now I know what poke means :)
Regards

Pingback by The Facebook Poke and Marketing

January 27, 2008 @ 2:07 pm

[…] And poking can lead to a lot of things, because now you know that nobody really knows why you are poking them, other than that you are not alone. But if you find someone you fancy, you should poke her… don’t let her look the other way, because then somebody else will be poking her. […]

Comment by James H. Gregory, Sr.

November 14, 2009 @ 10:43 am

I don’t feel at all constrained to believing there must be a single meaning for a term that, clearly, must transcend age groups. To a 63 year old male, I choose for “poke” to mean “Yo, Bro(Sis)…’whassup’…thinkin’ of you!!”. The meaning of “poke back” is, clearly, i.e. to me, a “fondly thinkin’ of you too, Kiddo…hope your day’s treatin’ you well”. Younger age groups are entitled to have a different set of biases that confer different meanings on, it seems to me, intentionally ambiguous terms. My friends know me. I expect them to interpret any contact from me in a way that’s consistent with my past behavior. That’s what “real” friends do!

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