<img title="Cool" src="http://www.italki.com/Scripts/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/emotions/img/smiley-cool.gif" alt="Cool" border="0" />
Hi,
I agree that the idea to earn on italki.com is bad. "Business before pleasure" is not always interesting.
I like italki because it allows you to meet a wide variety of people from all over the globe who have similar interests as you. Apart from that, you can learn about their culture from a primary source rather than an artircle on the internet.
I like italki it helped me to meet people who are interested in learning languages like I. However, there chat system is really bad you can't count on it there is absolutely a place for improvement.
I used to be a big fan of italki in the beginning. It was much easier to chat with individual users before, and it was much easier to start making friends. I think they've gone in the wrong direction by trying to encourage users to become teachers, and for students to pay for teachers. Moreover, their chat system was much better before.