Well, there is a lot of chatter, just like you (and the box's name) would suggest, but it's not massive volume... You would simply need to treat it as an IRC channel (ie ignore most of what most of the people say most of the time) and then have PM's PMs come to you as IRC PM's, say.

It'd work better with some clients than others. Bitlbee for example woluld work well for some, who watch their clients all the time, but poorly for me, who only has ICQ on there, and only with 5 people online - due to the chatter eating all the `to me' chat