I'm using Empathy on Ubuntu 12.04 (32 bits) to connect to "people near me", gtalk and facebook. I've been using it for about 2 weeks with no issues.
Then suddenly today the facebook account started dropping, disconnecting and reconnecting all the time. It does connect to facebook (I've found lots of other questions here but it's for people who can't connect -- I can connect and see the logged in users)
After about 20 or 30 seconds it gets disconnected, shows up a "reconnect / edit account" button on the top of the contacts list. If I either press "reconnect" or don't press it, it keeps retrying, getting reconnected, then dropping connection after a few seconds.
I have removed the account and created a new one. It appeared to have worked for about five minutes, then the issue reappeared.
After a couple days, the functionality was restored without any action from my part. I haven't even logged in on the site as suggested by other users.
It's been working fine since yesterday. It suggests the issue was caused by some factor outside my network, probably on the facebook servers.