This has been suggested and discussed many times on the past. Linden Lab has never considered such a move. And if you will think about it, the reason should be obvious......and logical. LL would prefer that you go in-world to use SL's chat. Why would they ever allow chatting with your SL friends without bothering to log in? They are not MSN chat, Yahoo chat or ICQ. You can log into your dashboard, see who's online and then, if you want to chat with one of your friends, log in to do so. You're asking LL to undermine their desire for residents to use SL for what it's intended to be used for......making it easy to chat with your SL without logging in is just something that would not contribute to SL.
Use one of the many chat clients available on the Internet. What's wrong with doing that? Many residents have chat clients....just ask them what their user name in some mutually agreed to client.
Your idea will go just as far as the others have gone.........it ain't gonna happen. And it's understandable why.
