Iconic forgotten Facebook button is back as Mark Zuckerberg declares ‘the classics never die’
Facebook's parent company Meta has announced it's bringing back an old favorite button.
The 'poke' feature was a way to give someone, well, a poke - prodding them to contact you or reply to a message without actually saying anything. It was equal parts annoying and useful, depending on who you ask.
It was a fun part of the old Facebook experience, but became more and more hidden over time as other features took its place.
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However, despite what most people think, pokes were never actually formally discontinued - you've always been able to visit the Pokes page on Facebook to see what's waiting for you.
When we went and checked ours out we found pokes waiting for us from back in 2015, which dates the feature pretty nicely.
This past month, though, Meta says there's been a 13 time increase in the amount people are using pokes.
It's changed things so that now, anytime you search for a user in the app or on the Facebook website, you'll see the Poke button alongside their details and the option to send them a message.
So, you're just one button press away from a little check-in with your friends.
The post pointing all of this out from Facebook was pretty coy - it's on Threads, Meta's rival to X, and didn't actually explicitly talk about the design change.
Amusingly, there were also plenty of people in the thread under the post reminiscing about pokes, and voicing their surprise that the feature still worked.
One user said: "Wait, I thought they removed 'poke' years and years ago. How do you poke someone now?" Another agreed: "Poking is still a thing?"
Well, it looks like it will be now, although whether this change stands the test of time is anyone's guess, since features come and go on apps like Facebook all the time.
Still, it's a fun throwback - for those of us who remember the old days, when it was all about our Walls, and there was no news feed to speak of.
In fact, Facebook recently turned the ripe old age of 20 years old - it was first launched in February 2004, so has passed quite a milestone, especially in web terms.
Mark Zuckerberg has remained in charge of the platform ever since those launch days, and he found time to weigh in on the Threads post about pokes, too, with a simple pithy joke: "Nature is healing."