I'm confused by trying to join a channel without seeing a clear list of what channels currently exist and how many people are in them (two things which you can

I'm confused by trying to join a channel without seeing a clear list of what channels currently exist and how many people are in them (two things which you can do in IRC and most chat apps). So I can enter any word in the box and "Join Channel" and just hang out in there by myself? That made me think, this is a good use case for private chat where you could tell your friends "join me in 'secret' channel" and they could do so, without being listed on the site. That would be cool. However, since I was just taking a look at it by myself I couldn't test that. Does the landing page look different if you are signed in? I'd like to see an About page on there to get a better idea of who is running this site before I give over google/facebook login. Pros: I love the name and the simplicity.