RIM To Make BlackBerry Messenger into a Social Network - Research in Motion has become a bit more social.RIM announced the launch of the BlackBerry Messenger Social Platform at its DevCon event in San Francisco, as a means of connecting the company's BBM messenger application to other apps, allowing users to chat, share content, and add application status updates to their profiles.
The service is expected to launch in the spring of 2011, RIM said, with an SDK expected to be released "soon," executives said.
"The BBM social platform is a very compelling, unique capability within the mobile industry," said Alan Brenner, senior vice president of the BlackBerry platform at RIM, at a press briefing Monday. "I think there's a lot here for developers...that isn't available elsewhere."
Originally just a real-time chat application within the Blackberry framework, BBM has evolved into more of a social framework, with RIM starting to showcase the technology in TV ads and other contexts. RIM said that 28 million users currently use BBM, RIM said.
RIM said that BBM features currently planned include: the integration of contact lists, allowing users to click to contact friends; application status updates within a user's profile; communities that can be formed around specific applications; direct data transfer of pictures, audio, and video; and invitations to join the BBM service or to a specific application use your Blackberry Playbook.
RIM is expected to launch a BlackPad tablet aka Blackbery Playbook on Monday as well.
Sources : http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20100927/tc_zd/254985