Using a variant of the trick that teenagers have employed for years -- using their instant messaging away status to represent mood, location, or generally what they are up to -- Hollywood freelancers have started to use their away status to indicate availability for work:

Cyrus Farivar

[from Wired News: Never IM in This Town Again!]

Instead of displaying simple "away from my computer" messages, Hollywood buddy lists now overflow with come-ons, from "need work" to "wrapping up shoot." Producers hiring for a new production can tell at a glance who's available now, who's not and who might be free in the near future.

My on-going Nerdvana spin on this: the buddy list is the center of our online universe. People make the away message do all sorts of things that it wasn't designed for because we would like to hang all sorts of self-identity attributes off it. It becomes a nexus of our meta status. I generally display what I am listening to on iTunes, but I would really like to have a spectrum of information being displayed: what I just read, the newest tag I just created, the last blog entry I wrote, and my Plazes location.