Facebook

Facebook, in its great wisdom, requires that members first establish actual personal communication with other members before being awarded privileged access to member profiles. Until the step of requesting or confirming friendship is taken, facebook members will have only four options for interaction with those whom are not officially befriended. The options are as follows:

1) Send message.
2) Poke him/her!
3) View friends.
4) Add to friends

If there are to be only four options, then three of these options make good sense. By sending messages and viewing friends (options 1 and 2) one may learn more about the party being considered for facebook-friendship before before proceeding to option 4 and adding them as friends with access to your full profile.

It is unclear what "Poke" is supposed to mean, though. Images of the Pillsbury Doughboy come to mind. At the very best, it is a poor choice of word. Why then, is poking given such a place of honor by the administration of facebook? They emphasize the poke option with an exclamation point. "Poke (your friend's fiance)!". Facebook seems to be arguing that given your four available choices, the poke is the most recommendable.

Considering that the poke's mere existence is puzzling, why is it one of the only actions allowed to be made between facebook non-friends? If someone is uncomfortable having another view such information as their relationship status and birth date, would it not follow that a poke! would come as unwelcome? "I met this unsavory person yesterday, and now they want to be facebook friends with me. I don't think I'll let them... Oh wait! I just got poked! That really changes things".

To these, and all questions about poking, facebook's official explanation must suffice: "A poke is a way to interact with your friends on Facebook. 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".