A Whisper Is A Stronger Social Signal Than A Public Shout

Yesterday was a surprisingly interesting news day, given how close we are to celebrating the holidays. Facebook struck while the iron was hot and released a brand new standalone iOS app called “Poke”, leveraging a feature that has been around since the early days of the product, as well as a shot across the bow of SnapChat, who it reportedly attempted to acquire. At first glance, it’s a competitive move, and also a whimsical one. The idea of sending someone a message that self-destructs is kind of “cute”, in the way that passing notes in class was when you were younger. But make no mistake about it, Facebook’s Poke is meant as a means to strengthen its social graph, as well as to crib signals from your daily lives and activities to make itself a better company. I’m not saying that anything is wrong with that, but these are the obvious facts. Let’s discuss the idea of a social signal first, though. When you tweet something, and someone responds, that’s a signal that the person is interested in what you have to say. One could also infer that this person “likes” you, or has an affinity for you or what you just said. This could all be torn down as bullshit though, since we all know that sometimes we respond to people to simply get their attention. The Facebook Poke is an interesting historical feature, one that hasn’t really been documented. It was Mark Zuckerberg’s baby, as Facebook was and is, but not much is known about it, only assumed. During yesterday’s ferver about this new Poke app, a phrase was repeated by outlets over and over again, here’s one from CNN: The poke, which is still around but rarely used, is a minimalistic form of communication — the digital equivalent of a head nod or wink. I take issue with the notion that it’s “rarely used”, because we simply do not have data to back that statement or sentiment up, Facebook has never made it public. I would challenge that it’s not public data because it’s quite important. Whispering to someone is way more interesting than speaking to ten people in a crowd. Your closest friends When you’re at a bar and you look around at the people there, are you interested in what a group of fifteen people are talking about, or what the two folks in the

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