> I see the same thing here. While it's interesting, I'm failing to see what the use case is. What's the niche that needs this solved in a big way?

I used Pidgin a lot. I always found it very convenient to have everything in one place and UI. Better one client than MSN + AOL + ICQ + IRC + Yahoo! + XMPP.

In the last few years I haven't used it much, but that's because it just doesn't support the popular messaging apps of the day (or maybe it now does, I haven't checked in a while).

Also, as others have pointed out, Pidgin is not and never has been a "service", it's just a library (libpurple) that implements various protocols, with Pidgin as the GUI (they also make Finch, a TUI).