Hi Ario,
I don't believe it has been tried here. I can ask Gromet about it, but, there will be a lot of coding which would have to be done. The only way it wouldn't be too much work; possibly; is if there was only one 'group chat' room. I don't know how long that would suffice the members as I could see people asking for 'private chat' rooms soon after. So, we would have to make, probably, a general chat room for each genre, and, a few private rooms. A lot of coding. I'm teaching myself HTML as I repair the story codes and may eventually be able to help in such an endeavor.
Unfortunately, I am unsure how well it would go over with it being so hard to get members to vote in a story contest or comment on topics. Like I said, I will bring it up with the Big Guy and see what he says...but, even though making even a couple members happy, I don't know if two or three regular chatter's would be worth the coding time. I know that sounds callous and I don't like to make the few members who would use it feel like they're not important enough for the coding because you are... I will run it through the mix.
You could always start a poll to see how many members may actually be interested in a real-time chat area. It would give us something to make a decision on.
Thanks for your suggestion Ario...any suggestions are worth the time to consider.
Dana