Facebook has released an app called Poke, a service that allows you to send messages, photos, and videos that can be viewed by the recipient for only a specific amount of time. Afterwards, the message is automatically deleted.
The app has been available for several days, although initially only for iOS (Android users will have to wait a few days). Poke works by sending messages or images to other people, but the idea is that your friend, for example, can’t save the message, but rather can only view it before it self destructs after a few seconds.
There were already other similar apps, such as in the case of Snapchat, available for iOS and Android, which Poke basically replicates. What’s the purpose of this app? Well, generally it is used to send racy messages or photos of which the user doesn’t want any trace to remain. This is the interesting about it; that is, that Facebook has approved an app of this kind.
You can choose the lifetime of the message, image, or video you’re going to send as either two, five, or ten seconds, so that once that time expires from the time it is received, the message self destructs without leaving a trace. However, recipients can always take a screenshot from their iPhone, although they would have to act quickly to do it. Also, the app will notify the sender that a screenshot of the message or photo was taken, and in the case of Poke, unlike Snapchat, the user has to be touching the screen in order to view the message, which makes taking a screenshot even more difficult to do.
Blake Ross, the project director, revealed via a blog post on the social network that Poke iOS was created in just 12 days by a small group of Facebook engineers. In addition, the CEO of the social network himself collaborated with the development team, and even offered his voice for the project. So, when you use Poke and receive a push notification, the voice you are hearing is that of Mark Zuckerberg.
Download Poke | https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/facebook-poke/id588594730
