Facebook starts testing ‘Greetings’, may make ‘Poke’ redundant

If you were not able to get enough of Facebook ‘Poke’, the social media giant is found testing a new feature called ‘Greetings’ which is based on a similar idea. Spotted by The Next Web’s social media director Matt Navarra, Greetings are just like Poke. It consists of four new options in addition to ‘Poke’. These are Wave, Hug, Wink and High-Five.

These icons are spotted right below the profile picture of the user. The row of icons will show up when users hold the ‘Hello’ button. The one to whom a greeting is sent, gets a notification. Opening it will lead him/her to the profile page of the sender and giving them option to send a greeting in return.

With this, Facebook is not just trying to bring back the decade-old ‘Poke’ feature back into limelight, but is also making it fun.
Reports reveal that users in Thailand, Australia, Canada and some other select regions are seeing this feature pop up. Although the company is not sure why it introduced ‘Poke’ at first place, bringing more options is likely to increase the rate of interaction, especially with those with whom you haven’t conversed since quite some time. This may make initiating a conversation easier. Who knows?

“When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings,” said Facebook to The Guardian back in 2007, indicating there was no defined purpose of the feature.

Facebook keeps testing several features in different parts of the world. Earlier this month it was spotted testing pre-roll video ads on its ‘Watch’ platform. The video streaming service is yet to make a debut in India.