My colleague Rafi and I just tried to connect to each other using the new Second Life instant messaging client "SLim." We are both on the Teen Grid as part of our educational activities at Global Kids.
As I suspected, SLim does not appear to work for Teen Grid accounts.
My guess is that this has to do with sharing of Second Life information between SL servers and the Vivox servers, that run the IM service. It probably violates the current user agreement or EULA in some way, or presents some other privacy concerns. Having teenagers exchanging text messages with the wider world does seem like a potential can of worms.
I sent off an email to some Lindens for clarification. We’ll see what they say.
UPDATE NOVEMBER 12: I have at least provisionally got SLim to work with my Teen Grid account. I haven’t successfully initiated a conversation, but it’s loaded my friends list.