i spent my childhood on icq/irc/aim as well. this is different because the entirety of those systems was chat. the entirety of this system is analytics and the way it's being palletized is chat.
Those systems also had a very different dynamic because of the limits on non-textual communication. If you had a camera and if you had a decent connect you might be able to upload your crappy 640x480 picture to someone in 2 minutes or so, otherwise you were limited to emoticons.