Facebook's SnapChat-Style Sexting App Is Called Poke (Seriously)

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Oh, well would you look at Facebook, trying to make a Christmas funny with its SnapChat copycat app. It's called Poke! Get it? Because SnapChat is what the kids are all using for their sexting these days, apparently, and Poke — you know, that once kinda flirty Facebook future that's now pretty much useless — can kind of do the same thing, and it kind of sounds like some bad sexual pun, too! Funny, Facebook, very funny, and way to admit the dirty little truth behind "poking" that we knew all along.

Oh, wait. They're serious? Friday afternoon Facebook released Poke, its rumored iPhone app for the incredible vanishing half-message "that makes it fun and easy to say hello to friends wherever you are." But don't get too heavy on the old-school "Poke" comparisons, because the new app can send regular messages, photos, or videos, too — but only for short periods of time, because that is what the kids like doing these days, if SnapChat's huge success is any indication. Like SnapChat, Poke has a time-bomb component: users can choose how long someone sees a poke before it ceases to exist forever — so you could sext poke all day long, because that, too, is what the kids like doing these days, if SnapChat's huge, smashing, sexy success is any indication.

Why would anyone use Poke over SnapChat? Well, the Facebook app itself has a much smoother interface than SnapChat, and you can report people behaving badly, and everyone's already on Facebook, right? Maybe this is the breaking point Justin Bieber could never hit, when something sexy goes from the tween set to actual human beings. We'll let you know when Poke shows up in our iPhone's App Store; for now we're not entirely sure if this is just some bad joke. (Although it is in the iTunes Store, so... we'll see?)

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.