Bbm Blackberry Messenger

[Cris Luczak]

BBMalso known by its full name BlackBerry Messenger, was a consumer-oriented proprietary mobile instant messenger and videotelephony application service originally developed by BlackBerry Limited and later briefly by Indonesian company Emtek under licence. Initially it was included and offered on BlackBerry devices before it was expanded cross-platform. BBM was shut down on 31 May 2019;[1] the company since continues to offer the paid enterprise edition, BBM Enterprise.

Messages sent via BBM were sent over the Internet and sent using the BlackBerry PIN system. In the past, many service providers allowed sign-in to BBM using a dedicated BlackBerry data plan.[2] Exchanging messages was possible to a single person or via dedicated discussion or chat groups, which allowed multiple BlackBerry devices to communicate in a single session. In addition to offering text-based instant messages, BBM also allowed users to send pictures, voicenotes (audio recordings), files (up to 16 MB), share real time location on a map, stickers and a wide selection of emojis.

With the release of BlackBerry Messenger 5.0, BlackBerry allows users to use a QR Code to add each other to their respective friends lists rather than using only numeric PIN identification or an email address associated with the user's BlackBerry. Recent BlackBerry devices can also exchange BBM contacts using Near Field Communication technology. Users can also set animated gif pictures as their display pictures,[11][12] although animated pictures have a 32KB size limit.[13][14]

The release of BlackBerry Messenger 6.0 introduced additional traits. This update is focused on social communication mediums, including 'BBM Connected Apps', which allow the user to invite friends to share their favourite BlackBerry Applications.

In late-December 2011, the audience measurement company BBM Canada sued RIM for infringing its trademark of "BBM" by using it as an initialism for BlackBerry Messenger; BBM Canada used it as an initialism for its former name, the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement. The company cited that it had received phone calls from users who believed that they were connected to RIM. However, RIM asked for the case to be dropped, as the two organizations were in different industries.[15] The suit was dismissed, and BBM Canada ultimately re-branded as Numeris.[16]

On June 27, 2016, it was announced that Indonesia-based Emtek Group had acquired the licensing rights for BBM. BlackBerry Limited would provide the BBM API to Emtek as part of the six-year, $207 million deal.[18] In 2017, the BBM servers moved from a data center in Canada to a Google Cloud Platform-based data center in Asia.[19]

On April 18, 2019 BBM announced that they would discontinue the BBM for consumer service globally as of May 31 that year and that users would be able to switch to BBMe, the paid, enterprise version of the messenger.[20][21]

BBM has been widely reputed for its uptime and reliability.[22][23] However, on October 10, 2011, users of the service in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa were widely affected by an outage at provider RIM's UK headquarters in Slough, England. The outage lasted for two days, during which BlackBerry Messenger was reported to be unavailable, thus seriously affecting the company's reputation.[24][25]

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins announced on May 14, 2013, that BlackBerry Messenger will be available on iOS and Android in the summer of 2013.[26] This would mark the first steps of BlackBerry Messenger reaching beyond its own platform, as it had never been available on competing hardware before.

A worldwide release for BBM on Android was slated for September 21, 2013, which was officially announced by BlackBerry. It was also announced that the app would require Android versions not older than 4.x.x (Ice Cream Sandwich & above).[30]

BlackBerry confirmed that BBM for iPhone would release on September 22, a day later after the official Android release and would work on iPhones running iOS 6 & later.[31] However, during the worldwide rollout of BBM for Android and iPhone on September 21, 2013, 1.1 million Android users downloaded a leaked BlackBerry Messenger APK which caused BlackBerry to cease the launching of BlackBerry Messenger on both Android and iOS platforms.[32]

BBM was officially released on iOS and Android on October 21, 2013. 5 million downloads were recorded in the first 8 hours of its release. BBM, in late 2013, was the No.1 free app on both the App Store and Google Play Store.[33] In total, the app had over 10 million downloads on the first day.[34]

On 24 February 2014, BlackBerry officially confirmed BBM for Windows Phone and Nokia X would be released by Q2 2014. Nokia confirmed BBM would be preinstalled on Nokia X devices.[35] As of June 2016, BBM was no longer offered on the Windows Store.[36]

For now BBM for Multi-Platform will offer Personal Chats, Group Chat up to 250 people, Status Updates and can send or receive messages up to 2000 Characters. BBM Channels, BBM Voice and BBM Shop is available on Android and iOS.

In early January 2014, a beta update for BBM on Android was released to testers. The update included BBM Voice & BBM Channels.[39] In February 2014, an update (2.0.0.13) was officially released to Android and iOS users containing the awaited features along with some other features including new emoticons and changes including a new look for Updates featuring choices to show All, Contacts or Channels filters.

On November 4, 2014, BBM scored 1 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "Secure Messaging Scorecard". It lost points because communications are not encrypted with a key the provider doesn't have access to (i.e. communications are not end-to-end encrypted), users can't verify contacts' identities, past messages are not secure if the encryption keys are stolen (i.e. the app does not provide forward secrecy), the code is not open to independent review (i.e. the code is not open-source), the security design is not properly documented, and there has not been a recent independent code audit.[40][41]

The enterprise version, BBM Protected, initially scored 3 out of 7 points. It later scored 5 out of 7 points after additional information was provided by BlackBerry and reflected in the EFF changelog dated November 14, 2014. It lost points because past messages are not secure if the encryption keys are stolen and the code is not open to independent review.[40][41]

When you think back on the old BlackBerry smartphones, most people probably think about one of two things: the keyboard and mobile email. And although those were endemic to the early success of the first breakout smartphone OS in a pre-iPhone world, the enduring legacy of BlackBerry is something else entirely: it is instant mobile messaging. It is BBM.

Before iMessage, WhatsApp, LINE, Signal, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, or whatever mobile messaging strategy Google has decided on this week, there was BlackBerry Messenger. BlackBerry Messenger, better known as BBM to its millions of once-devoted fans, was arguably the original "killer app" of the smartphone age and it set the standard for the way we have communicated via text on our phones for nearly 20 years and defined the blueprint for mobile messaging services as we know them.

First launched by Research in Motion (the company better known as RIM, which would rename itself BlackBerry in 2013) in 2005, the private messaging service had 4 million users in 2008. By 2011, that number had climbed to over 60 million. The brilliance of BBM was that it combined two existing quick messaging paradigms, instant messengers a la AIM and Yahoo Messenger and SMS. But unlike SMS, which U.S. wireless carriers were charging between five and ten cents a message for, BBM was free, included within the data plan that every BlackBerry user paid for either through their carrier or through an enterprise server agreement with their employer. Whereas a normal wireless user might send a few hundred SMS messages in a month, depending on their wireless plans allowance, BlackBerry users would frequently send and receive hundreds of messages a day.

RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie reportedly tried to convince RIM to make BBM cross-platform and available to wireless carriers as a sort of SMS 2.0 (an idea that is very similar to the Google-led RCS system), but that plan failed. Balsillie resigned from RIM in January 2012.

BlackBerry did eventually make BBM cross-platform in 2013 but by then, it was too late. Although BBM still had tens of millions of users, competing platforms had many, many more. By the time WhatsApp was sold to Facebook for more than $20 billion in 2014, it had over 450 million users. Today that figure is more than 2 billion.

BlackBerry (as the corporation is now named) eventually licensed the consumer version of BBM to Emtek, an Indonesian mobile application company in 2016. By 2019, even Emtek had given up the ghost, shutting down the consumer service for good.

BlackBerry Messenger, also known as BBM, is a proprietary Internet-based instant messenger and videotelephony application included on BlackBerry devices that allows messaging and voice calls between BlackBerry, iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile users. The consumer edition is currently developed by Emtek under license from BlackBerry Limited (formerly known as Research In Motion), and was first released in August 2005. Messages sent via BlackBerry Messenger are sent over the Internet and use the BlackBerry PIN system. Many service providers allow sign-in to BlackBerry Messenger using a dedicated BlackBerry data plan. Exchanging messages is possible to a single person or via dedicated discussion or chat groups, which allow multiple BlackBerry devices to communicate in a single session. In addition to offering text-based instant messages, BlackBerry Messenger also allows users to send pictures, voicenotes (audio recordings), files (up to 16 MB), share real time location on a map, stickers and a wide selection of emoticons. Communication was only possible between BlackBerry devices until late 2013 when BBM was released on iOS and Android systems. 300 million Stickers have been shared. Daily, 150,000 BBM Voice Calls are placed. There are more than 190 million BBM users worldwide as of 2015, and BlackBerry infrastructure handled 30 petabytes of data traffic each month by early 2013. BBM was very popular in the late 2000s and the break of the decade, before it started to lose out to rivals like Apple's iMessage and the cross-platform service WhatsApp. As of April 2016, Indonesia is the only country where BBM is the most popular messaging app - installed on 87.5% of Android devices in the country.

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