New App From Facebook to Send Self-Deleting Messages

When you say Poke, the users of Facebook who created their accounts before the Timeline era and all the scandals behind user privacy will think about the features minimalistic form of communication. Users used to ‘poke’ each other to keep in touch. In fact, poking was more like the equivalent of a nod or wink transposed to the online world. New users, on the other hand, will think of the new iOS app when they say Facebook Poke. This app comes with an excellent idea for some and, most important, it is completely free. By using this app, users are allowed to send messages, photos, pokes and videos of up to 10 seconds long to their Facebook friends who are also users of the app. Nothing new until now, but what makes Poke different is that the messages expire after a short time period, defined by their senders. This can vary from 1 to 10 seconds after the receiver has read them. This is hence the perfect chance to send messages you never want to be seen again.

When they announced the new application, representatives of Facebook said this is the most lightweight way to send messages and that Poke comes with great improvements for user privacy. When the app is opened a set of icons is displayed at the bottom of the screen. These buttons can be used to send a text message of at most 120 characters, a poke, a picture taken with the camera, or a 10-second video. Next, the sender has the chance to set the amount of time the receiver is allowed to view the message for. This can be 1, 3, 5 or 10 seconds. Optionally, a location for the message could also be added and, finally, the message can be sent to more than one friend at a time. On the other hand, if you want to view a message using the Facebook Poke app, all you need to do is tap and hold it until the time limit is reached. After that, the message is gone forever and is not even stored on the Facebook servers anymore. The only thing you will be able to see after reading a message is the sender and the date of the message, but not the content.

The idea behind Facebook Poke has been implemented before in an app known as Snapchat. This was a service that enabled users to send text messages, as well as photos and videos that were temporarily stored on a server. The service enjoyed great success, with over 50 million messages a day being sent during its peak period. The Poke app launched by Facebook is ad free, at least at the moment, and is also being used by more and more people. The only way to copy the message you receive with such an application is to take a screenshot of your phone. This is more difficult to achieve in the case of a video, for example. However, Facebook has considered this and sends warning messages for cases when the receiver of the messages takes a photo of the phone’s screen.