A Close And Personal Look at Blaq, The Twitter App for BlackBerry 10

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I remember my first introduction to Twitter. It goes way back, I challenge you to remember and share yours. My very first introduction was because of a contest with BlackBerry Cool, a Twitter contest. That’s how I joined Twitter and a new portal opened up for me, a whole new world of information. I’ve seen a lot of third party apps come through: TweetGenius, SocialScope, and others to name a few. But the one app that has caught my eye and kept my interest is Blaq, and I want to introduce you to Blaq and all the features it has to offer.

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Jerome Carty is the developer behind Blaq as we know it today. He’s been working on this app since 2011. Blaq has come a long ways since it first began. I would say the most recent version of app didn’t come to be until the BlackBerry PlayBook. Back then, beta testing required a side loading technique. One that used cmd prompts. It was quite the app. At the time I had found BlackBird but quickly came to realize that Blaq was a serious and evolving application fueled by the creativity and intense devotion of the developer. Since then, Blaq has been my sole third party Twitter app.

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Blaq is now of course and has been available for the BlackBerry 10 and you can find and purchase it in BlackBerry World. For only $2.99, Blaq can bring you the following features, but before reading these features, please take note that I’m going to take you through Blaq step by step so you can see all the features available including ease of use.

  • Beautiful, intuitive NATIVE user interface
  • Fast scrolling – no need to wait
  • Interactive gesture engine for quick actions to keep you moving
  • REAL-TIME Twitter streaming support
  • Power-conscious – When minimized, Blaq goes into low-power mode to save battery
  • The most advanced muting system – mute tweets based on multiple criteria
  • Sharing – Share tweets from Twitter to just about any app to Blaq and vice versa!
  • Active Frame – Know when you get new tweets, mentions or direct messages
  • BBM™ integration – share tweets updates with your BBM™ contacts 
  • Native or editable retweet support (hold down on RT icon in detail screen)
  • In-app notifications 
  • Twitter Username auto-completion 
  • Full user profile view 
  • Image previews within Blaq 
  • View your lists curated from Twitter.com
  • Multi-account support
  • Search people and tweets
  • Photo posting – Twitter
  • Q10 support

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So here we go. Once you purchase and set up Blaq, you have a brief tutorial as to how to use the app. I say brief because no matter how long you’ve had the application, there’s always something new to find, or a feature that you overlooked that you didn’t realize did more. Blaq has a darker background which makes it easier to see when you’re reading fonts or posting, at least for me. You have at the top Settings on your right which has the Font Size which you can customize, When to pull when inactive (how often) composing and send, and help. Help brings up the tutorial you had upon install. Blaq also connects with BBM so when you compose a tweet, it asks if you want to post it as your status which you can accept or decline.

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In Accounts on the top left when you gesture down you will find a place to put in your Twitter accounts, and yes, Blaq can handle more than one. If you swipe back up, you can see your timeline. The text is in white, the tags in blue, Twitter names in green, and hyperlinks in blue.

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If you place your finger on a tweet and move to the left with your finger you will see a shortcut bar come out on the right. This short cut allows you to quickly reply, retweet, favoritize, or share, translate or cancel as tweet options. Translate is a newer feature of Blaq that works quite nicely.

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If you move to the right, the main menu of Blaq appears. This is Mute, Search, Profile, Favoritize, lists, retweets, direct messages, replys,  timeline and compose. When you compose, you can also add pictures. If you reply, you have the option of reply, retweeting with regular, quote the tweet, classic retweet, retweet via, or cancel. Choosing options leads to share, Translate, and cancel. If you click on any tweet you”ll open up the tweet with the panel of choices at the bottom right you can see the three dots menu symbol. Click on that and you’ll open up Copy Tweet, Share Tweet, and Retweet Options.

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The translate option works great. In Search you can find Worldwide Trends, change Trend Location, In Lists, you can view Private, Public, and Subscribed, with the option to Add List.

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Personally I love all the hidden shortcuts in the app. I can tweet in all sorts of ways, and tweet the way I want. I also love the Translate feature and the ability to I can customize my Twitter my way, and also I can switch between accounts freely.

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The one thing I really love about Blaq is how it reminds me of DNA. Blaq has been original, there’s no app like it that came before Blaq, it’s an original work of art. Because Jerome is so persistent and devoted, he is constantly at work. He’s very dedicated and when he’s working on Blaq, there’s no stopping him. Blaq is always evolving, always changing, and he listens to what everyone has to say. Feedback is important to him. I know that Blaq is a top premium app and does so much for being a Twitter app. Customer service is top notch, a great group to help answer questions, and a devoted developer. The latest update was June 17th. Blaq is also supported by Bellshare GmbH’s BeBuzz Pro for BlackBerry 10. What else more could you want?

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If you have Blaq, please take a few to really look into the features I’ve gone over if you haven’t yet. If you haven’t tried Blaq, then you need to find out what you’ve been missing out on. You won’t be disappointed. Let us know if you have Blaq or just checking it out. This is the way I look at it. You have a BlackBerry 10 device because you wanted a tool not a toy. You believe in keep moving. With Blaq on a BlackBerry 10 device, it really leverages that power in the palm of your hand. Tweet the way you want and when you want, the way it was meant to be tweeted. The only thing we are left waiting for is hub integration, but we’re hoping it won’t take too long.

You can purchase your copy of Blaq for BlackBerry 10 here

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