Facebook’s ‘Poke’ feature, a long-standing but ambiguous element of the platform, has seen a 13x spike in usage over the past month. The surge is attributed to minor changes that made the poking page easier to find and improved suggestions on who to poke. Over 50% of these pokes are from users aged 18-29, many of whom are likely experiencing the feature for the first time. The ‘Poke’ feature, which has been around since Facebook’s inception in 2004, was created by Mark Zuckerberg with no specific purpose in mind, adding a layer of randomness and connection to the platform. However, its interpretation varies greatly depending on the context of the relationship between the users involved.
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