They work? I think every single time I’ve tried to use them, it looks like they work as far as recording when people enter and say things, but it will say people are there for a long time after they’ve left (perhaps just because it’s a web page which doesn’t really effectively detect when people leave) so it ends up mostly being people trying to talk to people who are no longer there, or at least aren’t looking when other people are typing.
The recorded time code seems something like 12 hours and 40 minutes in the future, or 11 hours 20 minutes in the past, compared to my local (Pacific / US West Coast) time zone, which may also tend to confuse people.
And it seems to only keep like 12 hours of history…
I expect it would work if people related to it as how it actually worked (like a forum where people check in multiple times per day), and/or if they ever happened to end up using it at the same time. Assuming it really updates when someone else posts. ;-)