Technically, Polk never actually left Facebook.
Facebook’s early classic features allow users to grab the attention of their friends with virtual nudges. Poke was discontinued years ago, but the company has recently seen an increase in usage among younger users.
Now users can peck their friends directly through the new dedicated button on their Facebook profile. This will alert Poke recipients through notifications. Additionally, Facebook users can see who plunged them in and find friends on Facebook.com/Pokes. This page allows users to track “pork counts” with their friends. They can also dismiss the pork if they don’t want to go back and forth.
The Poke-Tracking feature is primarily designed to appeal to younger users who have grown up with gamification elements built into social apps such as Snapchat and Tiktok Streaks. These features, on the surface, help friends track who send the message the most, but the winning streak is based on regulatory scrutiny and they filed lawsuits due to their addictive nature as children are obsessed with the app.
By highlighting the Poke count and making pork more prominent on Facebook, Meta wants to create a similar engagement mechanism. When users increase the number of pork with their friends, a different icon will appear next to their friend’s name, such as fire emojis and “100”.
It’s not the first time Facebook has tried to revive Poke in recent months. In March 2024, the company said it made it easier for users to find stab pages via search and to easily find friends after searching for them. These small changes led to 13x spikes the month after the change, Meta said at the time.
As to why they want to thrust someone, it’s up to the user. Facebook never explained the purpose of pork and left it open to interpretation. Polk is a way to attract someone’s attention, cheating, or simply troubling, depending on the user’s intentions.
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Poke counts may never be as popular as Streak, but adding them clearly signals that Meta is considering increasing Facebook engagement.
Snap has known for many years about the nature of striped habits, according to a study by John Height, author of The Anxiety Generation, which focuses on the potential harm to children’s brain development on social media. An article he co-published with Zach Rausch’s senior research scientist at NYU Stern included quotes from internal documents showing SNAP employees discussing how popular stripes are and how effective they are in fostering engagement.
Facebook today is a cash cow of Meta’s business, which is promoting long-term bets in areas such as AI and Metaverse projects, but has been criticized for its failure to appeal to younger users. In particular, the United States is seeking to recapture the youth market with a variety of initiatives, including university campuses, including short-lived campuses.
