Comment 27 for bug 372789

Yes, that would also work for me. Both Pidgin and Empathy change the fast-user-switcher to reflect their status, and tying in notify-osd with that (and letting critical notifications through) would be a good idea!

This would further integrate pidgin (but not going so far as depending on one or the other) into the desktop, and other IM applications can support this through plugins.