Followers are all handled through the followers API. Chat is used for subs and many other things but not followers. You have to poll the API, cache, poll again, and diff between the last call and current call. Please be aware that caching is between 1 - 3 minutes, so there is no need to hammer the API. 
For other chat-related things, I would look into an IRC library for Obj-C that can help with chat parsing.