My list of buddies on Pidgin IM was getting out of hand. Too many friends with multiple accounts — Jabber, MSN, AIM… Tim pointed out a couple of space saving tips.
First, you can drag a buddy icon and hover over another to nest them as a single entry. I’ve now amalgamated those with Jabber, MSN and AIM accounts into a single buddy on the list. Whichever account is top-most gets IM messages when you send them. You can expand a buddy with a right-click and change this ordering if you like.
The second tip is: buddies menu -> show -> buddy details. Uncheck this option to remove the icons and make the font nice and small. Now I’ve got space for more buddies. If only I could find some…