If you’re on Facebook often, you’ve probably noticed small “dots” appearing on your Newsfeed.

This is because Facebook has decided that they are going to remind everyone that’s on Facebook that there is, in fact, another way to communicate: through Facebook messenger. One use of the dots on Facebook now is to indicate the “presence” of someone who’s actually online at the moment and can be chatted with in real time. The tiny dot turns green when you hover over it to initiate a chat with someone, and with one simple click you can successfully begin to talk to someone who’s online.

The test right now of these dots is limited, and Facebook designers aren’t sure if the feature is going to roll out across the entire site just yet. In addition, the feature, much like the “reply” feature introduced a few weeks ago, is desktop only. In fact, many of the new features are planned only for desktop until further notice.

It seems that Facebook just wants you to communicate with the people you can communicate with when they’re around to talk to, which flies in the face of critics’ opinions lately of the increased ad activity on Facebook, including the new “pay to talk to someone you’re not connected to” feature.

Keeping Facebook users tied to its messaging, Newsfeed, and entire website is incredibly important for the company since research shows the younger generation is beginning to navigate away from Facebook to other more popular websites, such as Instagram and Twitter.

The dots have also been used in the notifications drop down to indicate “read” and “unread” notifications.

More features are in the works, but Facebook has yet to reveal them to its users.

Photo credit: Facebook

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