Research In Motion (RIM) wants its BlackBerry Messaging (BBM) Service to become the next social network enabling tool.
The company announced the BBM Social Platform at its 2010 Developer Conference yesterday, saying that access to BBM services would revolutionise applications.
"BBM started off as a peer-to-peer chat client," said Tyler Lessard, VP of global alliances and developer relations at RIM. "It now has 28 million active users growing at 1.5 million every month. We see that as a huge opportunity for developers to use it as a fully-fledged social tool."
Lessard said RIM would open up a suite of API and third-party services so developers can add their applications as plug-ins to the service.
"The author of a book club application, for example, would be able to create book clubs, manage chat sessions and list recent books read."
Alan Brenner, senior VP, BlackBerry Platform, said gaming and location apps would also benefit.
“Access to BBM services from within apps will revolutionise gaming, enhance multimedia experiences, and add a new dimension to location-based applications,” said Brenner.
Developers will be able to integrate various functions of the BBM service into their applications, including chat capabilities, content sharing and invitations. Other BBM functionality accessible to developers through the BBM Social Platform includes a contact list, which allows users to choose their BBM contacts from within another application to initiate social interactions such as chatting or initiating games.
It also features BBM user profile - an application which can insert application status updates into the user's BBM profile, allowing it to be downloaded from BBM by the user's friends. There are also application-specific communities where users can create BBM friend groups specific to an application and data transfer allowing users to transfer pictures, audio, video and other content directly from an application to their BBM contacts or groups.
Several BlackBerry Alliance members are already testing the BBM Social Platform as part of an early access programme, including Kik - a smartphone-to-smartphone messaging service that works across BlackBerry, Apple, and Android platforms, and the Kobo e-reader.
“Kik is all about sharing, buying and experiencing music on a mobile platform, so integrating with BBM will deliver huge value to our users,” said Kik CEO Ted Livingston. “Kik users will be able to connect with friends and colleagues to discover and share music; the experience will be much more intimate through BBM.”
“With the new BBM Social Platform we will be able to build a ground breaking social e-reading experience,” said Dan Liebu, chief technology officer at Kobo. “We expect to increase engagement as Kobo users share their reading and shopping experiences in real-time.”
Share