You should Poke her BY THE AUTHOR OF INSIDE FACEBOOK

BY THE AUTHOR OF INSIDE FACEBOOK
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6:01pm Today | Edit Note | Delete
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?

http://www.fbbook.com/fblo​g/

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.