Hi Ken,
Here is a me too post.
For me the contact list went blank after installing the telepathy ppa and
updating telepathy (yes... I should know better!)
I have tried using mc-tool to view the accounts as described above - all
works as expected - unfortunately the contacts are not rendered.
reg
One further comment - empathy, even though it fails to render the
contact list, still displays server related errors in the contact list
pane. For example empathy starts up rather more quickly than the
wireless connection - the contact pane displayed has the red bar
complete with text etc. about t