I think that NationStates should a group chat feature, that allows you to invite certain nations into a private message board. I think this could be a great addition letting people be able to message others directly, but also be able to send one message to several people at once. This could be useful if you have several friends in the game, but some are in a different region from yours. This would allow a group of nations to communicate, without having to be in the same region and use message boards or send telegrams. The telegrams are especially a problem for newer players, since they would be less likely to buy the postmaster upgrades in the store. This would also let people form alliances and discuss them in real time, instead of having to refresh the page (the message boards have to be refreshed to see new messages).
I think that there should be a limit to how many of these channels you can have. 10 if you have nothing, 25 if you're a supporter, 100 if you're a postmaster, and 100+ if you're a postmaster general. Obviously people probably wouldn't need 100, but it's another reason to buy the upgrades to your account, as well as a way to help nations better communicate with each other.
