Furthermore, the friends list through Impulse seems rather useless. My buddy Mike was hosting a game, was online, but on the friends list it said he was offline. He's on my friends list, I even checked the site through teh impulse icon on teh toolbar and it said he was online.
Because I've never actually seen him online I can't tell if its already been done, but maybe a system like (and I am not comparing, this is an example) like battlenet where you can tell what game your friend is in. Right now its just sort of hop in a custom game and hope and wait for the best.