[sheldonwt]

I'm really glad that Blackberry finally came up on HN because there's something I've been interested to get feedback about on here. I feel like a large section of the developer community doesn't understand the power of BBM. It's an application developed by RIM that allows for high speed conversations similar to texting except instead of sending messages over the SMS protocol, it uses the PIN message infrastructure that RIM developed so that it could push emails at a very high speed to phones. BBM is RIM's secret sauce to their cell phones. It's amazing to me, but having a text-based conversation with someone over BBM is ENTIRELY different than even a threaded SMS conversation on two iPhones. Firstly, the messages are sent between the phones much quicker. It comes with complete outbound/read/delivery reports, and allows for a much greater level of complexity in the messages that are sent. Secondly, it uses a buddying system that changes the dynamic of conversation. You have your normal contact list, and then your 'bbm contacts'. I have 90 BBM contacts, (mind you those are all over people I know who also have Blackberrys and we have connected the two phones), but at school I knew people who had 250 or more. Thirdly, it allows for inline insertion of almost any content one wants. Be that sound notes, music, pictures, etc. It also allows for GROUP chatting. In a way that is simply impossible with SMS and the way SMS billing works with the American cell phone companies today. I can't stress enough, there is a developer GOLDMINE here. The first group that writes an app which takes advantage of the inter-phone PIN messaging system that RIM has developed to do more than just BBM is going to be looking at a lot of money. I've had friends ask me multiple times why I didn't develop an app that would allow you to play chess or battleship against your BBM contacts (those are two simple ideas, the possibilities are immense), and after some research I got sort of turned off by the BBM api calls. There didn't seem to be enough of them, and the documentation was quite confusing. I feel like the next iteration of the Blackberry API will change this though, and I have a hunch that there is going to be a new wave of apps specially designed to take advantage of this system. Keep in mind there's nothing like this on iPhone. There is no special code, (like the Bberry PIN) that I can give someone to specially link our two iPhones. What is everyone's thoughts?

[rbanffy]

Please please please, use paragraphs. Juts leave a blank line between them.

[mikepurvis]

I was an intern at RIM two years ago, and I was with a small team that was working on applications that used PIN messaging in some of the ways you're envisioning.

It never really launched in the way that it was being worked on at the time I was there, but little pieces did make it out in various other forms—I wrote the QR code syncing mechanism that was part of it, which I believe is now launched as a part of BBM.

[weavejester]

What makes BBM different from a IM application like Google Talk?

[skorgu]

If you're on BIS it's just a very well implemented IM system. Logging in doesn't exist as a concept, messages are just sent like SMS. It provides sent, delivered and received notifications for each message and lets you do all the normal IM stuff like sending images, etc in relatively straightforward way. Honestly it's head and shoulders above AIM, gtalk, etc at least on my Tour. The add-a-contact with the barcode is nice too.

If you're on a BES I believe it ties in with Exchange's GAL so any contact the BES knows about is just available without you having to discover it.

The silly-named cnectd [1] is a cross-platform (iphone/android/bb/symbian) im client with very similar semantics to bbm. It's beta and noticeably buggy but functional.

[1] http://www.cnectd.com/

[adolph]

I reluctantly use a BB at work. For me, the PIN part of messenger is a pain. Identity seems to be tied to device so anytime anyone refreshes hardware, a bunch of PIN messages go out and a lot of the time they fail with some gibberish message. I'm much more curious about BBM having read what you wrote, as point to point messaging is an interesting thing, even though I'm not partial to adding interruption channels personally.

[sheldonwt]

Sorry I shouldn't have capitalized random words. I was excited to post something that's been spinning around in my head for a while.