Comment 34 for bug 1109251

I have the same issue (crash on startup, sometimes it works but then it will stop after a few hours (maybe when it reconnects an account?)

deleted ~/.purple/blist.xml and now it works

no idea if coincidence or not, but some people wrote somewhere that deleting .purple helps so maybe it's one of the files there getting corrupted.
I don't see how this can be related to unity indicator stuff though...
Will post again whether that helps next time it crashes too.