Can you please help me understand Facebook Chat?

I’m not 100% sure, but I think those are the people with whom you most recently got in touch via chat or private message.

The ones without the green dot are your friends but they are not logged in at that moment.

Facebook chat is like a primitive version of a real chat program. I don’t understand why anyone uses it.

I think if they don’t have the green dot they have left the facebook page, but are logged in.

I actually can’t figure out how to be available for chat on my ipad unless I am in the app. If you want we can test it when I am logged in on my husband’s computer?

Does it show I am available now?

Green dot, online. No dot, offline – supposedly. I’ve never heard of having any other ‘chatters’ on the list that aren’t ‘friends’.

The people who are on your list, but have no green dot, are a selection of your friends that Facebook guesses you are most likely to want to chat with. Now that “chat” (online) and message” (offline) are essentially the same thing, it is a way of sending a friend a message with one click, instead of a few.

This is about as much explanation as Facebook has given about how those contacts are chosen for you (under “Which friends appear in the chat sidebar?”). I would guess it has something to do with how often you exchange messages or write on each other’s walls… although many complain that they have no contact with the default “contacts”, and they can’t be changed by the user.

Also: there is no way to know who is logged into Facebook if they are not logged into chat.

I was wondering how the names of the people on the chat list got there, out of all of my 150+ friends. I see that @glacial and @jordym84 are correct – the people on that list are people I have chatted with in the past.

My biggest frustration is that you can’t choose who you want on the list.

I have the same question as @JLeslie about the iPad. I prefer the website to the app, but there are several things I can only do on the iPad if I use the app.