I've run live chat on my main site, but it proves difficult to police, and usually results in a minority upsetting the majority, and results in lost visitors. At least with forum I have 100% control.
Also the site has only just started advertsing on search engines, so it'll take a while to build up enough of a following, but I can add a few more threads to chat in for now. Any ideas?
One thing that we do on our other forum (not Filipino related www.win2win.co.uk/forum), is arrange a time & date, and then all meet in a Yahoo chatroom.