The new communication interface is pointless, useless, un-intuitive, and violates every common sense rule that should be used when dealing with a multi-tasking client.
I am no longer able to pay, or teleport someone in the chat interface. To teleport them I have to go to the friend's list and profile, and then teleport them from there. This is a lot of clicking when it used to simply be in their IM which made sense.
the Chat groupings are vertical on the left side, and all languages used in second life are horizontal. This means if you expand the tabs far enough to see names you've lost most of your screen and have no idea what is going on if you want to keep up with chat. If you intend for communicate to be left closed then why has the chat bar (simple text input without a full window) been removed? There is no longer even a notification when closed to tell you which chat or person sent you a new IM. These changes have destroyed the usefulness of the interface for productive users.
The positive statements made about this new interface seem to be made by someone who never uses second life, and does not multi task or chat in second life other than in the most minimal ways. Regardless of who thought this was a good idea because of the the way the new features have been integrated, the entire communications hub needs to be scrapped and abandoned. It causes too many clicks and too much time to communicate. It's only an improvement for people who sit doing nothing all day and ignoring the virtual world to read chat.