Facebook Poke Is Back, And At The Perfect Time: Here's How To Find It

It seems a classic Facebook feature has amassed some newfound popularity these days, especially among newer Facebook users. Earlier this week, the official Facebook account shared that the social media platform has registered a 13x spike in poking in just one month. It's a pretty interesting trend, considering the fact that pokes never had much of a functional or practical side to them.

In the simplest terms, poke is the digital equivalent of a nudge. Or maybe, a tap on the shoulder or a quick glance that doesn't go unnoticed. The whole concept is to show a person that you're thinking about them but aren't feeling sure about dropping a message and starting a conversation. The roots of this feature, however, are quite intriguing.

"We thought it would be fun to make a feature that has no specific purpose. So mess around with it, because you're not getting an explanation from us," Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg once posted on his Facebook page. In fact, Fortune reports that the poke notification sound is literally Zuckerberg saying the word "poke" in a comically machine-like tone.

Poke never really went away, just took a backseat as the younger generation shifted to newer platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. However, Meta recently made a few changes to boost the discoverability of its poking tool on Facebook, as reported by TechCrunch, and that has brought back the feature into the limelight once again.

Right now, there are two ways to access the poke feature on Facebook. The easiest one is through the search bar. Here are the steps you need to follow:

1. On the Facebook mobile app or its desktop, find the search field (identifiable by a magnifying glass icon), and type "poke."
2. When you hit enter, the first result you see on the next page is a banner that says "Pokes." Tap on the banner, and you will now see a list of your Facebook Friends.
   
3. Next to each name is a blue "Poke" button. Click or tap on it, and your friend will receive a notification about the poke action.

The other way to poke a friend is to visit the dedicated page via a URL. Open a web browser on your PC and access Facebook's standalone pokes page by visiting this URL: https://www.facebook.com/pokes.

Nadeem Sarwar/SlashGear

The landing page features a list of your mutual friends with the Poke button. You can either tap on it, or respond to a poke that came your way. This is the page where you see a breakdown of your poke activity; such as how many times you poked a certain friend or how many pokes you received from the same acquaintance.

If you have received a poke, it will appear at the top. You will see an alert message on this page corresponding to the friend's user name, something like "XYZ poked you," alongside a blue button that says "poke back." Of course, Facebook's standard privacy guardrails apply to pokes, as well. If you don't want a contact to send a poke your way, you can simply block them.