@siringo My family and I use Slack. It doesnt push ads like facebook and doesnt have sharing of contacts like almost everything does. I control the channel and decide who gets in. I keep it to just family members I want. It can do anything, even video, and keeps on getting better. I have an RSS channel for reading various blogs I like. I'm sure other things do all this but this is what I use.
Something else I use is Zoom which is mainly video but has some chat enabled with it. I use it for work purposes because I dont like to mix personal and business on the same app.