The only buttons I use in the top bar are the "What's New" and "Media" ones, the rest, I don't even look at. So yeah, that's probably why. Or I did notice and just forgot about it.
Personally I use Steam or Skype to talk with people, maybe because I never noticed the chat before as well.
Well back then we had a very small number of actually active users and we still have a relatively small number.
Windows live messenger, Steam messenger, Skype, comments, the status section, PMs, there are sooo many better ways to chat than the site chat.
I disagree with PM's you often have to wait a couple minutes rather in chat its more than 1/4 of that time.
You can only see what, 5 statuses at the same time? Not very handy if you ask me. Or can you look at all of them?