We tried Facebook's new 'Hello' button so you don't have to.

If you indulged in a spot of, ah, Facebook stalking investigating over the weekend, you might have noticed something that wasn’t there before.

Yep, it seems the social media giant has rolled out yet another feature to enrich our lives. Say hello to… Hello:

This brand-spankin' new button sits right up the top of each Facebook profile, and is visible regardless of whether you're friends with the person or not.

Oh, goody - another button to accidentally bump when you're four wines deep and clumsily inspecting the profile of someone you barely know!

Now, the button sounds self-explanatory, but you can never be too sure about these things when it comes to Facebook.

To save you the effort of finding out, I decided to give the Hello a whirl in a controlled environment (i.e. with a willing recipient who wouldn't be creeped out by my 'hello'-ing ways).

I visited my desk neighbour Clare's profile and sent her a little hello:

The good news: you have the option of undoing this action straight away in cases of clumsy thumb scrolling.

The bad news: if your victim has push notifications, they're probably a step ahead of you already.

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Here's what Clare received for my efforts:

Yep, this is effectively the 2017 equivalent of a Facebook's vintage 'poke' function, only it doesn't make your entire screen shake. (Also, you can still poke people, so it's not a replacement.)

Mercifully, Clare was feeling kind and reciprocated my gesture. Facebook thought it was worth celebrating, confetti and all!

We were also encouraged to take that mutual hello and turn it into something more substantial: a conversation. On Messenger. Which was probably just as easy to do in the first place.

All things considered, your parents will probably love this function. So have fun with that!