Details on the BlackBerry Social Platform Messenger API emerge

RIM announced at DevCon that they were working on releasing a BlackBerry Social Platform which would include BlackBerry Messenger API. We have wanted to see this for many years and now RIM is finally doing it. The idea is that you could play games and so on over a BBM connection. RIM has now set up a BlackBerry Messenger API page with some interesting details on what developers can do.

Advantages of a mobile-centric community

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

Advantages of the BlackBerry Messenger platform

The BBM platform offers a number of benefits for developers:

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

BBM platform APIs

Developers can use a variety of APIs to give their apps read access to BBM contact lists, user profiles and groups, while enabling users of their apps to chat and share files such as pictures, voice notes, videos and music.

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