An instant messaging application intelligently infers a user's unavailability from one or more indicia which include the user's electronic calendar. Preferably, the instant messaging application may report not only that a user is unavailable, but also give a reason for inferring unavailability, in order to provide other users with additional potentially useful information. Preferably, the user may specify which indicia and which parameters may be used to infer his unavailability in an editable profile. When another user requests status, this value is returned by the server. An intelligent instant messaging application as described herein provides other users with more accurate and complete availability information.

 
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