Answer to the last question is no. If they're not links, you'd have to insert them as images using <img> tags instead of <a> tags like this:
CODE
<img src="URL">
Just replace URL with the url of the images that aren't links. You can add those other links by duplicating what you already have like so:
CODE
<div class="contactbox">
<a href="" class="message"> </a>
<a href="" class="add"> </a>
<a href="" class="IM"> </a>
<a href="" class="rank"> </a>
<a href="" class="block"> </a>
<a href="" class="forward"> </a>
<a href="" class="favorite"> </a>
<a href="" class="group"> </a>
</div>
I haven't memorized the proper order of the links so just set them up until they look fine. As you can see, I removed the <img> tag at the top since it's unnecessary. For the DIV class, I changed it to "contactbox" (without an underscore) 'cause I doubt they work with classes. Just make sure you change the class on the CSS bit, too.