To say that the release of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) was underwhelming would be a bit of an understatement; while it retained many of the things that BlackBerry users have gushed about, it was decidedly old-fashioned compared to some of our more recent messaging clients like Whatsapp. Though perhaps the most infuriating aspect of picking up BBM for the first time was the inability to add your old contacts and friends by any conventional means. Instead, you were burdened with the old fashioned BlackBerry PIN, which I would liken to physically handing out your phone number. Fortunately, BBM is being updated with a feature called ‘Find Friends on BBM’ which should make a whole world of difference to those who have hankered for it.
From tomorrow (or today for some of you), the BBM app will be updated on Android to include ‘Find Friends on BBM’, a feature which will allow you to quickly assess which of your friends are already on BBM and give you options to send them your PIN. As for the friends that haven’t fortuitously keep BBM on their phones after its October release, or tried it at all, you can send them an invite via email or SMS.
Personally, I think this update is too little, far too late. This feature should have been available from day one and its effect may be minimal now seeing as many people will have simply uninstalled it when they realised how unintuitive it was to add people. Maybe I’m wrong and this will fuel a resurgence for BBM, which may do considering that BlackBerry says they are working on BBM v2.0, but I think BBM has a lot of catching up to do before it becomes a number one choice among messaging circles.
What do you think about ‘Find Friends with BBM’? Are you likely to try BBM out again now that this feature has been added? Let us know what your opinion of BBM is.
