Yes, we're planning to develop chat. Including video chat using WebRTC. This will likely replace the current private message system in CB. I do not have a time frame for when this will be available, but likely after CB 3.x as we'll be working on a new base framework API for our plugins. Once that base framework is done we will be making all of our plugins standalone Joomla extensions (e.g. you could use CB Activity without all the profile stuff).