Sometime in the past month or so Facebook made a small change which has substantially reduced the volume of poking on Facebook. It used to be possible to randomly poke people that you didn’t know on Facebook but thanks to a recent change by Facebook this is no longer possible. Personally, I’m not a highly active poker but I know a number of people that are big on poking. I mean how can you not be into poking? It’s a fun activity!
I hadn’t written about it but one of my readers alerted me to it again this morning. There are obviously a lot of people that are effected by this new change. Personally, I think that Facebook is trying to cut down on as many activities as possible which are focused on meeting people through Facebook directly. Instead they prefer that you connect with people that you already know outside of the site.
If you browse through users on Facebook you can no longer poke them directly from the directory and must now poke them from within their profile. While you can poke people that you don’t know by accessing their profile, not everybody’s profile is accessible to people that aren’t friends. It’s a small change but one that is sure to stir up some of the original users of Facebook that liked randomly poking people they weren’t connected to. Are you an active poker? Do you think this change matters?
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I'm fine with that, as long as FB doesn't disable the function to send a message to someone who isn't yet your friend. When you look for someone in the directory who's your friend irl or cousin – and come up with only one result but no network, or several results, it's a good idea to message the one you think it might be and ask them if they belong to such and such a family and if they know you before you try to add them as a friend. I'm not big on poking but don't mind it either, just hope this isn't a sign of limiting things even further when it comes to finding friends on the network.
Comment by Capri — June 5, 2008 @ 5:17 am
I’m fine with that, as long as FB doesn’t disable the function to send a message to someone who isn’t yet your friend. When you look for someone in the directory who’s your friend irl or cousin – and come up with only one result but no network, or several results, it’s a good idea to message the one you think it might be and ask them if they belong to such and such a family and if they know you before you try to add them as a friend. I’m not big on poking but don’t mind it either, just hope this isn’t a sign of limiting things even further when it comes to finding friends on the network.
Comment by Capri — June 5, 2008 @ 10:17 am
I still don't get it.
Comment by Val — August 17, 2009 @ 7:23 am
[...] Women who don’t use Facebook’s privacy settings on the site — limiting visibility in search results, restricting who can send you messages or friend requests, and making photos less visible — tend to receive pokes from unfamiliar faces, although this happens less than it used to. [...]
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