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
