I wasn't sure whether to put this here or in Newcomers, so i decided here.
As far as i know it is considered spam to chat to someone on the forums with no relavence to the topic (obviously) but is there a place (other then profiles) on AG for chatting to people?
No, there's no live chat. We typically encourage conversations to happen on profile pages so you can get an Email alert when your friend replies on your profile.
AG3 will have a better way of having conversations, both public and private.