IRC's still by far the best way to chat with a group of people. Set up an Eggdrop bot for notifications and shit, you'll basically have a far better version of what a social networking site is, and one that has real time chat. It's a shame that the only people who still respect IRC are the original heads from the 90's, and even a good number of those have pussied out. Efnet's a shell of what it use to be, and the sad part is. While it's dying, it wasn't replaced by anything. There's no web equivalent to it, nothing even remotely close.