For anyone who remembers Facebook’s early days, the poke was always a curious feature. It was never explained, never defined, and yet somehow became a cultural footnote of the platform’s rise. Now, in 2025, Meta is dusting it off and giving it new life with a modern spin that borrows heavily from the playbook of streaks and gamified badges.
The new version of the Facebook poke is more visible than ever. A dedicated button now appears directly on user profiles, allowing friends to nudge each other instantly. Every poke is recorded on a redesigned poke hub, where users can see who poked them, discover new friends to poke, and track their growing poke counts. As those counts rise, emoji-style badges appear, turning what was once a throwaway interaction into something more like a scoreboard. Unlike in the past, users can also dismiss pokes entirely if they do not want to play along.
This approach clearly mirrors what platforms like Snapchat and TikTok perfected: gamification as a driver of daily engagement. Snapchat streaks, for example, became a defining feature for an entire generation, even as critics argued they encouraged addictive use. Meta appears to be chasing a similar effect with pokes, tapping into nostalgia while also packaging it in a way that feels familiar to Gen Z. The company has already seen promising signals, with a surge of interest after it made pokes easier to find last year.
What makes the Facebook poke interesting in 2025 is that it still means nothing and everything at once. A poke can be a playful hello, an awkward attempt at flirting, or just a reminder that you exist on someone’s feed. The lack of definition gives it flexibility, and in a time where most social interactions are carefully curated, that kind of open-ended gesture may have new appeal.
For Meta, the revival is as much about strategy as it is about nostalgia. Facebook has struggled to hold the attention of younger audiences, often dismissed as a place dominated by older generations. By gamifying pokes and framing them as a streak-like interaction, the company hopes to spark lightweight connections that keep people coming back. Whether the poke becomes a breakout feature again or simply another quirky relic remains to be seen, but Meta is clearly betting that even the simplest forms of interaction can help close its generational gap.
