Almost a decade ago, having a BBM number was assumed to be a cool thing. People flaunted having an instant messaging app on their phones, and many would wonder what a BBM exactly was? Blackberry Messenger has been one of the pioneers in encrypted peer-to-peer communication service. But now with the arrival of many other messaging platforms, BBM has finally given up and has decided to shut down the service.
The company said in a blog post, “The technology industry is very fluid, and in spite of our substantial efforts, users have moved on to other platforms. Though we are sad to say goodbye, the time has come to sunset the BBM consumer service, and for us to move on.”
BBM was first launched in 2005 and became an instant hit. The platform was only available for the Blackberry cellphone users, and in 2013, the company made it available for iOS as well as Android users. By 2015, the company had raised to 190 million worldwide users.
At that time, BBM introduced features like video chat, sending and receiving multimedia and also allowed its users to use a few payment services.
In 2016, Emtek took over the operations for BBM and to bear with the tough competition started to work on new features. But it seems that the messenger is no more able to co-up with the competition since its rivals Whatsapp and WeChat have got their hold over the majority of the users worldwide.
However the enterprise version of the messenger, i.e. BBMe will continue to provide its services to the consumers, and the ones, who still want to use BBM, can go for BBMe paying a half-yearly fee of USD 2.49. BBMe includes features like end-to-end encryption and message editing/un-sending. The BBMe app will be available for free on both Apple Store and PlayStore, starting from Thursday.
For now, the last day for BBM has been decided to be 31st May. And, till then, the users can download the pictures, videos and documents they have shared on the app. As soon the app shut down, the company will delete all user data from its server within seven days but will keep some important data on the server due to the legal reasons.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.