Today I started adding real names to AIM user names, mainly because its getting to the point where I cannot remember the IRL counterparts to those on my Buddy List. Address Book really makes this easy, it sure is a nice feature. I really do not understand this error I got:

Could not add name to your buddy list. Your buddy list is full.

I was going to associate a name in my Address Book to his listing in iChat. When I clicked "OK" to confirm the name change in iChat, I got this above error message.

That user name fell off my iChat list, so I opened up another AIM clone. He was in fact still in my buddy list. The next time I opened iChat his name was back. So my Buddy List is apparently not full.

Has anyone else seen this error?

UPDATED
I got this same iChat error when adding a NEW name to my Buddy List. In the example above I was just editing an existing name. So I tried adding this new name to my buddy list in Adium, and I got a similar, but much more informative, error message. It seems I do in fact have too many people on my Buddy List. I have 99 contacts in my Buddy List. I did not know there was such a threshold.

But wait...there's more! I have collected over the years 3 AIM accounts. I have my old old old one, I have one I use for business work, and I have my mac.com AIM name. So with the help of an IM clone that allows me multiple logins, such as Trillian or Adium, I am set.

But whats with the 99 buddy limit? Why should I have to prune? I know people that have more buddies in their list then me, so I do not understand this limit. Is it just for the clones (iChat, Adium, Fire, etc, etc)? I am thinking it might be because of the clones because they use an open source library which is based on an older version of the IM protocols. Just a hunch.

Originally posted at Breaking Windows.