Comment 2 for bug 332348

This is the sole reason why I cannot use Empathy as my main IM client. I've embarrassed myself quite a few times (woke some people up) thinking "Hey look my friend is online at 4am, wonder what he/she's up to?", only to buzz their phone and wake everybody up :(

There are different levels of conversation, you IM someone instead of call them because it's a more casual and non-intrusive way of creating a conversation. When people are signed in to IM they are "available" and generally looking for a conversation. Not-so when logged into IM 24/7 from their phones.

Empathy's inability to distinguish between these levels of availability is it's greatest flaw.