Gnome 3 instant messaging

I never used Instant Messaging so far, but now with gnome3 I see the
screenshots of notifications within gnome shell and the somehow
integrated chatting.

But I have no idea how to get there on my desktop.

I have the full gnome ebuild installed, got some gmail and icq account
within pidgin or empathy but somehow I don't get it.

Feels stupid ;-)

Could someone get me started on this?
I googled quite a while already but didn't get very far ...

Maybe I am missing something somewhere, I had gnome-light before and
upgraded to full gnome 3 a few weeks before.

Thanks for any pointers, Stefan