I’ve been taking a look at the new BlackBerry Messenger (“BBM”) app for Facebook. It’s due to become available at the end of the week — and it’s a piece of genius. Whilst the rest of the market is obsessing over the iPhone, BlackBerry is quietly continuing to shift millions of units. 20% of the 80 million smartphones sold last year came out of RIM’s factories and many of them are ending up in the hands of communication obsessed consumers, particularly females.
I just saw a study (coming out shortly) that backs up my assertion that — in the UK at least — women (young in particular) simply can’t get enough of BlackBerry, particularly the BBM functionality.
There’s a slight issue with BBM though — it’s hooked into your device ID on the BlackBerry network — commonly known as your ‘PIN’, an alphanumeric monicker that is a bitch to remember. Hardly a deal breaker I know.
BlackBerry Messenger 5.0 has a solution for it — in the form of a barcode or what we used to call ‘QRcodes’. Modern BlackBerries running BBM5 can use these barcodes to easily determine a user’s BlackBerry PIN without having them type it in. All you need is a facility to make one of those barcodes.
Enter the Facebook BlackBerry Messenger app. Just install it on to your profile in a few clicks and boom, your friends will be able to add you to BBM in a jiffy.
I tried it out this afternoon:
And here’s the output, customised to my specific BlackBerry model:
Get it on your profile from Friday: http://apps.facebook.com/bb_barcodegenerator/
And if you haven’t upgraded to BBM5, here’s the link: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/3729
i have tried to have someone scan my barcode to add my as a contact and it sucks. its a hassle because it takes a few tries to get it right. why not just type “mypin” and press the spacebar? it turns the words into your pin so all you have to do is create an email or sms and in the body type mypin, press the spacebar and send the result? much easier in my experience.
Aye, it's just getting that message across to the end user!