This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

New York • When Facebook launched its latest, visual-heavy design in December, an unlikely surprise ensued: The Poke button — yes, it still exists — regained a prominent position on the profiles of the network's more than 500 million users.

The Poke, which first appeared on the site when its founders still called Massachusetts home, had been long forgotten by many users after it spent years camouflaged by numerous other features under the attention-hogging profile picture. No longer in the shadows, it's now located on the upper right-hand corner, alongside the message button.

However, if you asked around to see if anybody has noticed, you would likely be served — as this reporter was — a "no" sundae smothered in "so what?" sauce, with "I don't know what you're talking about" sprinkles, and a shoulder shrug on top. Nobody cares.

Odds are, though, that if you are on Facebook you've been poked at least once. And that experience probably led to the inevitable, the ubiquitous, the unanswered, what-does-a-poke-mean conversation. It's a Facebook rite of passage.

If you're one of the site's early subscribers, you may have had the conversation with friends in a crowded dining hall, or with your roommate after regretting drunkenly poking that guy from the dorm party the night before. Back when Facebook's limited demographic lent itself comedic, overanalyzed, and sometimes melodramatic interpretations of the Poke, it was a conversation to be had.

If you're not an early subscriber, keep in mind that this wasn't the Facebook you've come to know and love. The Poke predates most of Facebook's prominent features, including the "Like" button, Chat, photo tagging, News Feed, even messaging. You could also poke anybody, not just friends and friends of friends like now. Communication on the site was so limited that the Poke button came to be understood as "a kind of wordless message, a meaningful glance across the room, the whisper and muted reminder of a connection. In other words, a sex thing," says Greg Atwan, author of "The Facebook Book."

So, sex and college students. That makes sense.

But that wasn't even the fun part. Fan pages for the feature quickly emerged with names ranging from "The Poke button should be called 'Yes, I would like to sleep with you' " to "Sometimes you really need a 'Slap' button instead of a Poke."

Third-party application developers caught on, and created a spin-off called "Super Poke." Users were not only granted slapping, they could also hug, high-five and grope (not to mention throw a sheep at) their Facebook friends.

The Poke also inspired "poke wars," a game wherein two friends would poke each other back and forth — always within 24 hours of the previous poke — until one either grew tired or wasn't able to poke back within the time limit. Some of the most notorious "wars" went on for years.

"Summer of 2005 was just a Woodstock of poking," says Atwan.

More recently, the Poke seems to have lost its thunder. Though it is impossible to know exactly how many people still use the Poke button (attempts to reach Facebook went unanswered), the general feeling among the people interviewed for this article was that Poke button usage was down. Many could not remember the last time they were poked or the last time they poked somebody.

Even taking Facebook's exponential growth and worldwide expansion into account, the number of people using the Poke button is probably proportionately insignificant. And that's unlikely to change because of the feature's new position on the profile.

These days, some users are ambivalent and some are even hostile. "The last time a guy poked me, it really creeped me out," said Rocio Celaya, a 25-year-old who lives in Brooklyn.

An early version of the site's FAQ explained that when the creators of Facebook came up with the feature, they "thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose," adding that they "encourage you to come up with new meanings."

Brandee Barker, who was director of communications at Facebook until 2010, says that unlike many of the obscure applications that have cycled through the site — particularly those created by third parties (think Food Fights, Graffiti, Quizzes, etc.) — the Poke is core to the Facebook experience. It is not in the same tier as, say, "FarmVille," but right up there with the Wall and the Share button.

"Just as 'friending' on Facebook has become part of our lexicon so has poking and the fun associated with it," Barker says.

But the reality of Facebook is different now. Facebook's expansion to a larger and broader user base ironically compromised some of the poke's versatility. A poke from your Aunt Barbara will not — probably — elicit any doubt over her intentions (as it did when that girl in chemistry did it). Its subtle suggestiveness is gone.

Also, there are now endless ways to communicate on and off of Facebook, and the overflow of information leaves us with little tolerance for lack of clarity. That's evident in Facebook's new design as well, which casts most of the clutter (read: third-party applications) off to one side of each user's home page.

Except that for the Poke, the fun was really in all the things that it inspired and not the Poke itself. With those eliminated, the Poke has gone the way of the appendix. And as doctors and scientists have shown, that can go.