Replying to Can I make a recommendation?

Been on NS for a long time and the site has gotten quite user friendly. But, I want to make a suggestion or 2. Lemme know what you guys think.

1. Friends online. Can you bring back that feature? I loved it. Its really practical to see your friends on NS so sending PMs is not a hit and miss thing.
2. Make the message box bigger... like 2-3x longer down the screen? Its really hard to keep track of what im writing in a 2-1/2" long box. Same goes to comments on articles.
3. Restrict the tag system on pictures and videos. I wanted to see some crash pictures and saw no crashes for pages. Some attention whores select all the tags to make sure their pictures appear everywhere (and that goes for orange names too!). Is it possible to clean that up a bit?