nm-applet doesn't start

["Eugéne Suter" <easuter gmail com>]

Hi again,

I've successfully built NetworkManager on VectorLinux 5.8 (slackware 11 derivative), thanks to help from this mailing list.
Anyway, after installing the package I built, I ran "nm-applet" and nothing happened.
So I opened a terminal, and ran nm-applet from there.
No errors occurred (or any other output for that matter) but I could see the terminal was busy, since the prompt didn't re-appear.

I'm using XFCE 
4.4, and according to NetworkManager's homepage, the applet should work in any mainstream environment, including XFCE.
Do I need to start a daemon or something?
What did I miss?

Thanks in advance!

Regards,

Eugéne