Retro trend: Facebook brings out the nudge again

Facebook is pulling one of its original functions out of mothballs 21 years after its introduction and apparently wants to make it a (retro) trend. In the USA, poking – in the original: Poke – is currently the subject of an Instagram story with which Facebook is promoting the function. In it, the social network explains that the function is now making a comeback and should become more visible in interactions and profiles.

As a reminder, nudging is an interaction from the early days of Facebook. It consists of clicking a button to send a notification to another person that they have been nudged, to which they can respond with a nudge back. Facebook has always left it open whether the nudge is just a nice greeting or a form of flirting –, but this uncertainty and ambiguity was apparently what made this otherwise rather pointless interaction popular with users.

In Germany, it was a case of cuddling

The German equivalent of this was "Gruscheln", which even found its way into the vocabulary. It became popular in the 2000s in the VZ networks, especially StudiVZ, and was felt to be much more popular in Germany than the US counterpart of nudging.

However, with the addition of other forms of interaction, Facebook's nudging became less and less popular and even seemed to disappear completely at times. But it never really disappeared. If you go to facebook.com/pokes, for example, you can look up who sent you a poke many years ago and poke them back. This also works in Europe, as we were able to test successfully, while the higher visibility of the function advertised in the USA is still a long way off. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Poke button appears prominently again on users' profile pages, for example, or is also displayed in contact suggestions.

Goal: to inspire younger users

With the revival of the poke button, Facebook apparently wants to get younger users more interested, according to US specialist media. More variety in the type of poking is also conceivable in order to counter its competitor Snapchat. However, it remains to be seen whether young people will really nudge back.

(mki)