- Today RIM announced that they will be opening the API’s to 3rd party developers for BBM. What this will translate to is the ability of developers to take advantage the features BBM has for fast communication. According to RIM an estimated 2000 new users are added every hours to BBM.
BBM Social Platform:
• 28 million active BBM users
• growing at 1.5 million users a month, 2,000 new BBM users an hour
• Developers weave BBM functions into their app
• Extensions of the BBM client for API’s and Suites
• Share content through BBM
• Create a book club about what you are reading and list what you have purchased
• Social Gaming multiplayer to invite other users to join a game
• Providing it soon to developer partners in
Press Release Below:
RIM Announces BBM Social Platform
Developers Will Be Able to Leverage the Power of Social Interactions within their Apps
San Francisco, CA – BlackBerry DEVCON 2010 – Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ:
RIMM; TSX: RIM) today announced the BBM™ (BlackBerry® Messenger) Social Platform,
giving developers the tools to build applications that take advantage of the social aspects of the
popular BBM service.
“The BlackBerry developer community has been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to integrate
BlackBerry Messenger with their apps. BBM is a very popular service with over 28 million users
and opening its real-time social connectivity to third party applications presents incredible
opportunities,” said Alan Brenner, Senior Vice President, BlackBerry Platform at Research In
Motion. “Access to BBM services from within apps will revolutionize gaming, enhance
multimedia experiences, and add a new dimension to location based applications.”
Developers will be able to integrate various functions of the BBM service into their applications
including chat capabilities, content sharing, and invitations. For example, users will be able to
invite their BBM friends to join them in a game and then chat with one another while the game is
being played.
Other BBM functionality accessible to developers through the BBM Social Platform includes:
-
Contact list – allows users to choose from their BBM contacts from within anotherapplication in order to initiate social interactions such as chatting or initiating game play
-
BBM user profile – an application can insert application status updates into the user’sBBM profile allowing it to be launched or downloaded from BBM by the user’s friends
-
Application-specific communities – users can create BBM friend groups specific to anapplication
-
Data Transfer – allows users to transfer pictures, audio, video and other content directlyfrom an application to their BBM contacts or groups
-
Invitations – allows users to invite new friends to BBM, invite their friends to interactwithin or download an application, and accept invitations, all from within an application.
Through the BBM Social Platform, RIM is providing the BlackBerry developer community with
the opportunity to leverage the power of BBM in their own applications in order to help drive
loyalty to their applications through social and community interactions, as well as increase
discoverability of their applications through peer communications and referrals.
Several BlackBerry® Alliance members are already testing the BBM Social Platform as part of
an early access program.
“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 eReading
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.”
“The BBM Social Platform will allow us to bring innovative social features to our games that get
friends playing together. Making social connections is a cornerstone to successful casual gaming,
and with BBM integration, our fans will be able to easily connect with their friends to compete
or cooperate,” said Nick Tremmaglia, Product Manager THK Live, Magmic Games
“The integration of BBM functionality into our leading sports app will be a game-changer for
ScoreMobile,” says Benjie Levy, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Score
Media Inc. “We expect that embedding key BBM features will deepen user engagement,
lengthen visit sessions, and help virally grow ScoreMobile’s user base.”
“Telmap’s search, mapping and navigation solutions have been a huge success in recent years
and have proven to be extremely popular with BlackBerry smartphone users. We are proud to be
one of the first application developers to integrate with BBM, as we strongly believe that the
combination of a community together with Telmap’s expert location capabilities and BBM’s
best-in-class messaging solution, will result in a winning offering,” said Motti Kushnir, Telmap
CMO.
The BBM Social Platform is expected to be available in the spring of 2011
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