Developers: Why should you develop with BBM?

by Mac Jadalhack

28 September 2010 No Comment

Just yesterday, RIM announced BlackBerry Messenger opening up to developers. While browsing around on BlackBerry’s official site, I came across the BBM development page bringing a lot of great information for developers and why they should develop with BBM. Here are some advantages they listed:

Increased engagement and app stickiness: add an addicting social element to your apps by allowing users to connect with old and new friends
Increased discoverability: with over 28 million users worldwide, word about your application can travel fast in the BBM community
Increased monetization: developing apps with BBM functionality will increase engagement, discoverability and virality—all key factors for increasing revenues and profits
Always-on and always instant: BBM will revolutionize applications, whether they’re gaming, music or commerce apps
Anytime and anywhere: BBM enables instantaneous sharing of location information
Anytime camera: bring real-time media and video streaming to your apps

There’s a lot to do with BBM as is. Now when it comes to development, it can be taken even further with all the APIs available. Listed below is all the APIs for BlackBerry Messenger.

BBM contact list, user profiles and invitations

Invite BBM contacts to download your app or initiate a social interaction within your app
Determine which BBM contact has downloaded your app
Access user profile info such as avatar, status and location

Application box in user profiles

Add a customizable application box to a user’s BBM profile to broadcast achievements or provide updates

Groups

Create BBM groups specific to your application

Content/chat from application to BBM

Initiate embedded chats with BBM contacts from within your app
Share content with BBM contacts from within your apps

Content/chat from application to application

Create sub-communities within your application, even if the users are not pre-existing BBM contacts
Enable social interactions within your sub-communities

Streaming data between applications