I agree. This is the thing I most miss from Pidgin.
When you dragged an item in the contact list over another contact name, they would be grouped, thus leading to a shorter and clearer list of contacts.

There is already a bug open for metacontact support (see bug 460647)

This feature has been asked on the mailing list recently and I explained why we probably won't implement such feature.
See https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=590812

Sorry the right link is http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/telepathy/2009-October/003950.html

*** Bug 606528 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I need this option too!!! I'm forced to use other IM-client, becose I have many accounts and the using of Empathy is very uncomfortable. 

Make this option, please!

(In reply to comment #4)
> Sorry the right link is
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/telepathy/2009-October/003950.html

You didn't explain anything, you just said "I totally disagree". Why?

This is pretty much essential.

Empathy is a good IM-client and it is default client in Ubuntu. But
I'm forced to use the other IM-client. Problem is in using of many
protocols (2 ICQ, 2 jabber, gmail, facebook - hundreds of contacts) and Empathy don't separate this protocols in contact list. It is very unconfortable.
Make, please, the function of separation of porocols in contact list
optional (for example: view - separate protocols).

And some protocols I use for communication and other - for work. And when somebody new write to me, I see in contact list through wich protocol he found me. And im Empathy I forced to look properties of the contact. It is also uncomfortable.

The other proposals with sorting by groups are unusable.