I'm not tied to Facebook specifically, but Skype chat does drive me nuts at times, so I'd definitely be interested in searching for alternatives to that, though finding something that offers multiple rooms while being accessible via any device is tough (Facebook does it easily, but everyone would have to be on Facebook).

What Facebook excels at is stuff like recruiting and providing news/announcements, the kind of socially driven aspects that you really can't get from a forum. It's a good idea, just requires someone to repost stuff that comes from the forums every day or two.