IMs to calling card lists

So I sent an IM to all my SL friends (just in case I got stuck not being able to play for a while). And some of my friends IMed back through that. I figured since it worked like a group conversation, maybe it would only send the first one to those who were offline.

But I got a couple messages this morning saying that they got 70 messages in their inbox telling me they had messages from me... basically the entire friggin conversation. >.<;;;;;

So I'd like to propose that when we send an IM to our entire friends list, ONLY the first message be emailed. If the rest pop up in an IM window when they next log on, that's not as bad, but don't send the whole conversation via email. Had I known it would do that, I would have closed the session as soon as I sent the first one. >.<

Though incidentally, for the purpose of notifying friends of things, would it be possible to extend character limits for IMs? It's hard to say all you want to in one chunk. >.<;;;