Nov 18 / monicadhaliwal

2000-and-late

On October 22nd, 2013, RIM finally decided to launch BBM on Android and iOS, and I say this with little enthusiasm. The BBM application was long overdue, serving as a bitter reminder of what could have been if they had only launched the app years ago. Although there is a high demand for the application, I do not see a bright future for RIM. The company is trying to salvage what little remains, and is doing a terrible job might I add. Blackberry announced on Twitter that they had reached 5 million downloads after eight hours of launching (Burns, 2013). As one of many who attempted to download the application upon its release, I was wait-listed due to its excessive demand. I found this completely ridiculous, and agree with Thomas’ post about how the company is nothing but a sinking ship. BBM was once a unique application that allowed its users to send picture messages, have group conversations, show read receipts, and more. Now it is the mere equivalent to every other messaging application in the app store, having almost no ‘product differentiation’ at all. I believe that what sparked the high initial demand of the application was purely nostalgia. Users similar to myself wanted to relive their glory days in high school where they treated BBM as a form of ‘MSN’ or ‘instant messaging’ on-the-go. However, in simple terms, BBM just isn’t the same. Nice try, RIM.