This forum is based on another forum, its just heavily modded, that being said there are plenty of chat plugins available and adding would take 2 seconds. I agree this would be useful however its unnecescary, imagine 1000's of users using this. It would be impossible to chat! Maybe an auto refreshed topic_display is an alternative

How do you think facebook does it?

IM only to friends or people's names you click on if they accept an "IM invitation"

no. this is not myspace or facebook.

no way. Besides it being a security risk and a scam risk, it would put all kinds of load on the servers.

hell no

I Never said it was

Paul doesnt want this to turn into facebook/myspace thus this wont happen sorry