Cool!
For people asking about different protocols, there are other packages with support for them.
Usually I have xmmp opened by the implemented libraries (in contact list), but Pidgin makes possible to do other things very useful like "alarms" when someone gets online, etc.

oh and I'd like to report a bug in pidgin status
for now it's impossible to modify an existing saved status, because when you select it in status list, it'll be automatically selected as your current status (same with select and choose "use"), so it'd be impossible to choose "modify" hope you can fix it along with updating with more recent pidgin version thanks