Viewers can import their instant-messaging buddy lists and chat online with friends while watching the same programme.

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Instead of getting together to watch a movie, some people huddle around the living-room game console, or strap on a headset and chat online with friends across town or across the country over some gunfire.

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Unless you deliberately sign off, however, you'll appear online and available for chat with friends -- even while you sleep.

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Online bingo is immensely sociable with chat rooms building lifelong friends.

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Chat forums on many sites including BBC News Online are being inundated with requests for information about missing relatives or friends.

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