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"I have a mission for you. One so lofty, so arduous, so utterly impossible that many of you may abandon the cause.\nWe're going to reclaim the Facebook Poke. Why? For the same reason we climb mountains, cross seas and eat an entire pie in one sitting: Because it's there.\nYes, since the inception of the social networking site, the mysterious option to poke friends has been available \u2014 and it hasn't really changed since then.\nIn the early days of Facebook, a version of the FAQ noted that Mark Zuckerberg and Co. just wanted to create something with no real purpose.\nThat's not really rational when you think about it. As Anton Chekhov said, \"One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.\" Yup. A poke is basically equivalent to a loaded gun \u2014 an apt description, really, considering it's become a kind of weird weapon over the years.\nWhat started as a mere bauble has morphed into a tool only regularly used by utter and complete creepers. We conducted an online survey of a few hundred of our friends, fans and followers, and 55 percent banished poking to the realm of \"ick.\"\nStill, when asked whether they had ever poked anyone themselves, 59 percent of respondents said yes. So why the disdain for the digit, yet the predilection for the Poke?\nHerein lies the purpose of our mission. Yes, the Poke may have strayed into the realm of 4chan and tell-all web shows, but it has not yet gone the way of Friendster. On that note, we call upon you, individuals of the internet persuasion, to take back the Poke!\nAnd so begins my Netiquette column \u2014 which I write with my Stuff Hipsters Hate co-blogger, Andrea Bartz \u2014 this week over at CNN.\n\nCheck out the column at CNN.com &gt;&gt;\nimage courtesy of iStockphoto, fQwasyx"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2010/08/04/facebook-poke-2/>