Even with full chat, communication is not as easy (as VMK) in the game. You can follow your friends to the same server, but right now you can't follow to the same room. If you wanted to do all of your talking in the game, you would have to message a friend to ask where they are, then follow and hope they haven't moved! They do have so many servers that if you have a lot of friends that want to play together, you can arrange to meet on a non-crowded server and kind of have the place to yourselves.
One confusing thing is that there doesn't seem to be gender-specific clothing, or many options for boys clothing-wise. From what I can tell, the base avatar is the same for boys and girls and it leaves the gender identity to you with lots of hairstyles and clothing choices. This was just an interesting choice on their part, doesn't really affect gameplay.
Still, there are far more girls than boys, and yes, they do play taken in BABV- at least some of the girls try to find a boy. It is *not* as widespread as in VMK though. I'm guessing that's because they really aren't successful in getting virtual boyfriends.
This really is a great game. The whole company is behind the initiative- the CEO has an account (Maxine) and she shows up to give out gifts every once and a while. This game is going places (and not to the trash can in 3 years).