Have you tried printing $1 out and seeing what it looks like?

Also, I find it a little sketchy that you're copying the entire content's of the chatroom, but not iterating to find the new people. You need to iterate over the chat's contents and check every name.

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.