For me, I'm interested in language exchange and learning about other places. I don't see anything wrong with the idea that you could become friends with someone after starting a language exchange. Part of communication is that you can get to know other people, talk to them and learn about/from them. I think if you happen to form a friendship, that's great, I mean why not. I think the important thing is you are comfortable exchanging languages with whoever you are talking too. I will say though, I'm not after dating or to be popular. I'd be happy with one active language exchange partner over a bunch of people that never write/talk.

In my opinion most of the people have an idea that they will be able to learn languages. As you can see, there are many of them who do this on italki. The problem here is that, they are barely separate the purpose to learn languages and the imagination that they actually learn something. It's a big dillusion in  which you  are sure that by the making pages and have somebody in your friend's list you have already developing the level of a foreign language. No, it's not. Otherwise the children who just borned, would have been already to speak   their mother language )
Answering your  question, Here I am looking for practice preferably on a dayly-basis. But it's not easy to find somebody who will put "candy" together(there is other impolite word, but let it make in a polite way)) But hope dies last)