Just thought I'd throw my hat in, as well. I have the same problem, and I noticed it after I upgraded to the new 3.2 kernel that just showed up in the repos a couple of days ago. As with the others, I can still pop up the buddy list and such, so it's still usable, just not visible. I've tried rebooting a few times since then, and still no icon. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not too worried about it.
Galaxar