I don't think there is any clear meaning it depends on how well you know the person doing it, but this is a funny article on it.
The Facebook Poke and Marketing
I have been poked by all kinds of people. Some of my friends pokes me, some people I don’t know pokes me, and I have a few relatives that have been poking me lately… but why are they all poking me?
When I asked my friends and relatives why they had poked me, they said something like “everybody is doing it, and it seemed like a fun thing to do”. When I asked them what a Facebook poke really is, none of them had an answer. We are all poking, but we have no idea what it is?
According to Facebook:
A poke is a way to interact with your friends on Facebook. When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings.
No wonder why nobody knew the meaning behind the poke. When the people behind Facebook encourage their users to come up with their own meanings of the poking, how can we know why they are all poking?
I actually have no clue why they are poking me, and when I ask them about it, they don’t have a clue themselves. I guess poking might just be a way to get attention. It’s a lot like marketing, but this time, you are marketing yourself. In order to get attention, and for someone to take a look at the product (the product being yourself), you need to get attention, you need to get people to watch the product. You can do this by poking them.
And poking can lead to a lot of things, because now you know that nobody really knows why you are poking them, other than that you are not alone. But if you find someone you fancy, you should poke her… don’t let her look the other way, because then somebody else will be poking her.
To me, poking is either about having fun (doing it for no reason other than having fun) or about flirting, just so you can say that it was love at first poke. Are there really any other interpretations? I can’t come up with more than two.
http://www.slymarketing.com/2008/01/the ... marketing/
