Well, a couple things on that:
1) I tried, but I just couldn't make the "who's online" feature work on the homepage after literally hours of effort. I will revisit this at some point.
2) For scheduled chats, I do have a means to amply promote the feature on the homepage, just couldn't get to it this last time 'cause I was away. I do encourage anyone who wants to schedule their own chat to add it to the calendar, and see what happens. If you alert me to it, I'll be sure to give it proper promotion.
#2 doesn't fix the impromptu chat issue, but yeah, that's explained in #1. If I could, I would... I just need a stretch of time to focus on it. Sorry about the deficiency in the meanwhile...
I'll bump it up my priority list.