GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 599976
indicator-session's status changes do not work work with AIM.
Last modified: 2009-10-29 10:43:38 UTC
The full description + videos can be found here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-session/+bug/452659 In a nutshell, When I change status to "busy" or "hidden" with the indicator-session applet, then empathy glitches the status to "away". The correct behavior works fine in Pidgin.
The indicator session is Ubuntu specific and not part of upstream.