i guess that you only have a chat with people that you are following and are yours followers. for you have a language partner you do have that to follow someone and this someone have that to follow you . do you understand ?

If you are a follower, then you are willing to look at someone elses writing. If you are a friend, then you communicate with each other more often and each becomes more familiar with the other person.

When you become friends with others here, it means you already communicate often with them through messages or sort of. A follower means people who join in Italki who start to be your follower in this case they can see all your updates from your notebook, discussion, answer and question session but they cannot message you in your inbox message, to do that you should follow them too so you can communicate each other. Following means you start to follow people who join in Italki who you think you want to know all about them whether their notebook, discussion and answer and question session, but just like that, you cannot message them until they follow you too. What you have to do to be language partner? Well, in this case you exchange the language that you learn with the language they master or know it well. If you just want to communicate a while even you said you want to be their language partner and vice versa, you can do that too by using other communication outside this maybe through Skype or sort of. To be active or not as a language partner, all depend on you and your language partner and with your main purpose to do that. Good Luck ! )