depending on when you sign up it takes abt 5-7 days for an email response, unless it *has* been that long
I'm not for sure if it's manual or not, but it seems like it if there's quite a bit of time before confirmation emails are sent out
ytoo.org lists a few status services, some reminiscent of old twitter, but as far as I know ppl use status.cafe the most bcuz of how simple it is and isn't rly another social media site, rather a glorified widget (that allows theme customization if you're willing to code it)
atabook and smartgb come to mind for the commonly seen ones, though others ive seen aswell are htmlcommentbox and ayanos comment widget
glad to hear you relate! your site's awesome btw a friend of mine is a huge lisa frankenstein fan and i showed your site to them and they absolutely adored it