Facebook Testing Greetings Feature to Give Poke a New Lease of Life: Report

Facebook will soon roll out new ways to allow friends to 'greet' each other in an effort to boost engagement on the platform. In addition to the current 'Poke' option, users will be able to send to their friends a wink, high-five, hug or wave. The new Facebook feature has been released to coincide with the tenth anniversary of Poke, and is presently being tested in Britain, Thailand, Australia, Canada, Columbia, and France, says a report in The Nation.

Under the 'Hello' button on your friend's profile, the new options can be seen by just long-pressing the button. On desktops, users need to hover the cursor over the 'Hello' button to get the new 'greeting' alternatives. These work in a similar way the 'Reactions' on a photo or status work, and the new greetings also have an undo button for an accidental send. To recall, Facebook introduced the 'Hello' button in June and placed it at the top of users' profiles.

This is the latest feature the world's biggest social networking company is testing and comes soon after it rolled out the 'Did You Know' feature. With the Did You Know feature, Facebook asks random questions to its 2.07 billion monthly active users, which can then be shared as posts with their friends. It also rolled out the standalone Facebook Creator app to help users create original videos, with exclusive features for live videos.

It also started a new initiative to take on revenge porn, which entails users sharing their nude images with the company so that their digital signature can be created. In case another user tries to upload one of these images, the platform will not let it be uploaded by mapping the digital signature.

In India, the company launched the Blood Donation feature in October, which saw over 4 million people sign up within a month. Apart from this, Facebook rolled out Disaster Maps to share its data with disaster management authorities to help communities in impact areas.

Written with inputs from IANS