Though Facebook's Poke feature has been around since 2004, the new standalone mobile app will give users a new Poke experience on the social networking site.
Facebook on Friday introduced a reinvented Poke feature with a new standalone iOS app. Considered a rival to Snapchat, the Poke app for iOS allows users to send messages, including photos and videos, to their friends on the networking site.
The catch is the message will disappear within 10 seconds of someone opening them. However, users can set a time limit for how long the recipient can view – either 1, 3, 5, or 10 seconds. It seems the message can contain up to 120 characters.
“The poke feature has been a part of Facebook since 2004. Now we’re excited to share a new poke experience for mobile. With the Poke app, you can poke or send a message, photo, or video to Facebook friends to share what you’re up to in a lightweight way. To see a message from a friend, press and hold the message until it expires. If you ever see something you’re uncomfortable with, you can click the gear menu and report it,” says Facebook in post.
Facebook Director of Product Blake Ross has revealed he and his friends built the new iPhone app in just 12 days.
In the meanwhile, Poke app has become the number one most downloaded app on Apple’s marketplace, less than 24 hours after it became available. Poke has garnered a 3.5/5 star rating on the US App Store from 241 ratings. Download the Poke app from App Store from here.
The release of the Poke app comes a week afters it was rumoured that the social networking giant was working on its own Snapchat-like application. Snapchat was launched for iOS platform in September last year. The application allows users to send photo, video and text to friends that last for only a few seconds. Snapchat users can also set a time limit for how long the recipient can view the message, which is up to 10 seconds.