A technique and apparatus to provide status tracking of presence and/or location of a mobile, wireless device to a requesting entity even outside of a particular wireless system. Presence and/or location information is provided to entities outside of a particular servicing wireless network using call processing components of a mobile network (e.g., call setup procedures), and using standard mechanisms currently available to any appropriately conforming Mobile Switching Center (MSC) element. A wireless chat tracking system is implemented utilizing a change in mobile registration status to automatically notify a chat group system outside the wireless network of current status information activity regarding a relevant device, e.g., registration activity or inactivity timeout. In the wireless chat automatic status tracking system, a registration notification (REGNOT) message is either explicitly forwarded or copied to an external IP based application (e.g., to a mobile chat group system).