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First Anniversary of Official BlackBerry Support Community Forums

by Ronen Halevy on Apr 5th, 2009 at 2:04 pm EST
15 Comments »
 

BBForumsBirthday I can’t believe it has already been a year! Victor let me know that the BlackBerry Support Community Forums is now a year old. It was pretty shocking when RIM first announced their official forums since until then RIM was very standoffish towards community forums. Back then they had a developer forums but it was running extremely outdated software and RIM practically never participated in discussions.

Now a year later it is like RIM has done a complete about face. They have a thriving community forum that I have to applaud them for. I really hoped that they would have found a way to combine it with the Owners Lounge by now but hopefully they are working on that. It seems kind of pointless to keep them separate.

My hope is that in the next year RIM will find a way to integrate all of your identities on RIM’s website into one account. Kind of like Google where you can login to all of their services using one login. There really is no reason to have a separate login for your:

  • BIS account per carrier (Why is this locked to a carrier in the first place?)
  • Owners lounge login
  • BlackBerry Support Forums
  • BlackBerry App World (Why have to use PayPal? What if RIM decides to move away from them?)
  • BlackBerry Developer Login
  • Your profile every time you download an application from RIM (I hate filling out that form!)

I am sure there are more that I am missing buy my hope is that in the next year RIM will let you have one login that will span all of the login secured areas of RIM’s website.

So I have to ask: What do you think of the BlackBerry Support Community Forums so far? Has the RIM involvement in the forums been useful?

Personally I think that the Community Manager for the BlackBerry Support Community Forums, MichelleK, Is doing a great job so far. I hope the whole team keeps up the good work and helps make sure that the BlackBerry communities voice is heard inside RIM.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 and is filed under News.
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15 Comments to “First Anniversary of Official BlackBerry Support Community Forums”

  1. Posted by: jmlowes
    April 5, 2009 at 4:49 pm EST

    Too bad the community BB forums seem have much better support than the official BB forums. I usually avoid the forums at BB as they are usually of little help.

    I agree, it would be nice to have one login and not have to fill out that form every time you download something from RIM.

  2. Posted by: Bla1ze
    April 5, 2009 at 10:03 pm EST

    If it wasn’t for other prominent names in the BB community, such as JSanders and others, the “official” BB forums would be nothing more then unanswered questions sadly, sure there is some employee’s there, but sadly the forums are for the most part ran by Lithium a 3rd party organization, which runs pretty much every other “corp” forums ie: Sony, BestBuy, Verizon etc..etc.

    And if you look through it, the majority of answers that are given more often not refer to other non official BB forums such as CrackBerry, BBF and places such as Berryreview, RIM would have been better off employing those of said communities rather then paying Lithium money.

    My $.02, anyways..

    Sounds harsh, but it’s the truth and often times..truth hurts and has to be harsh.

    • Posted by: tanzim
      April 7, 2009 at 2:54 pm EST

      People don’t make comment just for the shake of having some lines under your name. BlackBerry Support Community Forum is one of the best places to look for anything regarding BlackBerry.

      Joey (JSanders) is one of the Elite among us…I salute him for his contribution but there are other contributors too. Just pay a visit there and you guys will know more…its better then typing foul words. Like the contributors content are also genuine and backed by proper references.

      Now the most important thing…I (contributor/uses) make a comment/suggestion and RIM listens to it. Guys who listens to me? It’s RIM who is the heart of all BlackBerry devices. About forum engine…I support Xandrex fully.

      I’m not saying other forums are full of stupid things! I’ve learned a lot from other forums too. Guys don’t hesitate to give desired credits to whoever it is?

      Anyway best of luck to you all.

      tanzim

  3. Posted by: Ronen Halevy
    April 6, 2009 at 12:05 am EST

    I agree with you both. The non-official community forums seem to be doing a much better job at supporting users. RIM would be better off just helping out on those forums. On the other hand I think its a fundamental culture shift that RIM is finally making even the smallest headway in supporting their users. Usually they don’t give a cr@p.

    I did notice that JSanders has really been making himself known on the official forums. I see his replies are some of the most informative ones there. Personally I don’t visit the official forums all that often so I tried not to judge. Let me know if you have had any personal experiences either way.

  4. Posted by: DjSmooth
    April 6, 2009 at 8:45 am EST

    Ok, I appreciate all that you guys are doing in keeping us abreast of all that is going in the the BerryWorld, but for goodness sake, this is the second article with some very clear typos (kinda making my head swim this early in the morning). Is there an editor in the house…

  5. Posted by: DjSmooth
    April 6, 2009 at 8:48 am EST

    And Yes, that Darn forum when downloading has put the breaks on my downloading a few times, it just don’t make any sense at all, everytime you download!

  6. Posted by: Better Berry
    April 6, 2009 at 4:43 pm EST

    I totally disagree, their help has been a blessing. I have even seen some employees now taking the time to post on the forums. It is knot like it was 6 months ago and it is getting better every day.

    I hate to say it but, most users are just to lazy to search the internet, search keywords in posts, or even read the manual for their issue. Lazy users just post too many questions about simple stuff. This includes all forums, not just RIM’s. This actually floods some forums and getting all the questions answered in a timely manner is a tough or impossible job.

    I will be hanging out at their new improved forums.

  7. Posted by: Krypto
    April 6, 2009 at 4:50 pm EST

    I’m not sure how some of you can say such negative comments. It might’ve taken a little while to get the BlackBerry Support Community Forums up and running, but there are several very active members on there and it’s really thriving. There are also several more new BlackBerry Technical Advisors on there that are actually working to resolve problems that people have.

    I applaud RIM for setting this up and I think that it’ll continue to get better as more people join and actually help. The one big bonus of the BSCFs is that you can go there for help and support in an environment where you are a lot less likely to slammed and flamed. There’s a greater level of respect there, and that’s a lot more than can be said for some of the other forums. This isn’t to say I don’t like checking out other forums, but I much rather prefer spending my time in a respectful enviroment where people don’t get insulted just for discussing speculation!

    Just, my $0.02! :)

    • Posted by: Nurse Berry
      April 6, 2009 at 7:18 pm EST

      I ditto you Krypto! I love it on the Support Forums! I have learned so much about the BlackBerry as well as love helping others!

      I love it!!! Thank you to all who are a part of such a great community!

  8. Posted by: knottyrope
    April 6, 2009 at 4:51 pm EST

    BlackBerry® Enterprise Solution area is where I help out at when I can. Wish I could say it better than Krypto.

    Quoted from Krypto

    The vast majority of questions get answered on here, and good luck getting better answers from the other places. The community forums are a public forum and solutions are provided by people who stumble across the forums and decide to help others using solutions they’ve found. The vast (and I mean almost all) majority of users are not RIM employees. We are just like you and came here either looking for information or other. In some cases, we don’t know the answer, in other cases, there may not be an answer, or in other cases, a quick search of the forums would already come up with an answer. Just because questions don’t always get answered in 5 minutes, doesn’t mean they don’t get looked at.

  9. Posted by: Nurse Berry
    April 6, 2009 at 9:05 pm EST

    Happy Birthday BlackBerry Supp:)rt Forums!!

    And many many many more!!

  10. Posted by: Xandrex
    April 7, 2009 at 3:28 am EST

    hello,

    I am an active contributor to the BB Support community forum.

    @Bla1ze :
    I do not want to lower JSanders’ role on that community, but he is not the only one to answer, not even the first. Apart from new RIM employees that arrived on April 1st, people that answer on this forum are no more than 20, and make answers that contain more than 4 letters so it takes more time than just “STFW” or “RTFM” like can be seen on other BB-oriented forums.

    Besides, the population of people going on that BB Support Community forum is… the lamest people. It’s the people who did not read the manual, did not search the internet, went to the BB mobile webpage and saw a link to that forum (think “I saw a light so I came in ?”)

    So in a way, you’ll always get lame questions “how do I change my ringtone” and RIM did well to provide a forum for those lame questions. It really is low level support and does not even try to compete with BlackBerryForum or CrackBerry or Pinstack, that is precisely the reason why, when tech is higher than our knowledge, we link to those forums.

  11. Posted by: Xandrex
    April 7, 2009 at 4:17 am EST

    (continued)

    You can see the RIM forum as a way to help you not have too many newbies, and that is respectful in itself.

    Etiquette is quite strong on this forum : we link a lot to BTSC knowledge base articles (in order not to make people believe that the forum is the only source of knowledge), we try not to talk about non-official matters (like leaked OSes) because of the newbie audience.

    About Lithium : I don’t like that forum engine. But who cares if it’s Lithium, phpBB, SimpleMachinesForum or a handmade forum engine? it’s just a tool.

    Apart from that, I agree with Ronen Halevy : there is no reason why I should have 10 accounts for BlackBerry matters :)

  12. Posted by: Berry Good Stuuf to say
    April 7, 2009 at 8:52 pm EST

    Well my hats off to you Blackberry support community.
    You have made a 800% improvement in the last year.
    I also love the professionalism that your forums are achieveing. Instead of the popups and ad spam other sites are handing out, I love getting the anwsers with out it.