Category: Apps

The Canadian tech company announced that its BBM has been beefed up as a focus is placed on software.

The tech company from Windsor, Canada may be struggling when it comes to hardware, but it is using its popular BlackBerry Messenger program and other software to help to bring itself back into relevance and profitability.

The company has announced that it has beefed up its free BBM application for all smartphone operating systems.

There are several new features that have been added to the BlackBerry Messenger app, many of which will be quite appealing to the current and future users of the mobile application. Among the most appealing could be one that allows a user to “retract” a message that was sent to a recipient in error. This option also allows a user to set a time limit on the existence of a message that has been sent.

The BlackBerry Messenger update also provides new location reporting tools that gives users a greater options range.

For instance, the new BBM features make it possible for users to be able to decide whether or not they would like to publicly reveal their physical location. They can decide that they do or do not want to share this data and, if they do, they can state exactly how long they wish to continue to do so.

Until very recently, most of those features did actually exist in the BBM mobile app, but they were available only when using the premium version of the application, for which people paid an annual $12 subscription fee. That said, now that social messaging competition is headed skyward, BlackBerry has opened up these features to users of the free mobile app.

According to the BlackBerry senior vice president of BBM, Matthew Talbot, “Building on the renowned immediacy, reliability and security inherent to BBM, the new release provides unmatched level of privacy and control to BBM users without any subscription fees.”

Talbot also went on to say that providing control over the BlackBerry Messenger content and messages shared by users can ensure that those individuals can be confident in the control they have over that information.

The mobile app is reportedly adding a number of surprising features including “secret chats” among others.

Following changes made to the Facebook Messenger app including giving it its own virtual assistant, rumor has it that this popular messaging application will soon also have mobile payments among other options that appeal to its users.

Many media outlets are speculating that smartphone based payments and “secret chats” will be on their way.

Privacy is among the latest hot topics when it comes to mobile technology, so the ability to bring an added level of encryption that would make it possible to hold secret chats would potentially also help to keep mobile payments secure, in theory. The idea is not necessarily an off the wall one. If a large enough investment is being made into keeping chats secure then it might makes sense for Facebook to apply this type of mobile security to other features, as well. As mobile wallets are blossoming everywhere nowadays, this addition to the social media platform could be a logical next step.

Despite the fact that mobile payments and secret chats have been mentioned regularly, details are not immediately available.

There have been many speculations as to what would be involved in the new features that have been suggested for the Facebook Messenger app. For example, using separate password protection for specific chats could make an interesting difference to the security level available for certain discussions between users.

The main thought with regards to the smartphone payments aspect is that the messenger app would make it possible to send money to family and friends who are also users. This could suggest that the social network is seeking to compete with other digital payments platforms such as Android Pay, Apple Pay and even PayPal.

The feature that was identified in a leak that has been spread by several media sources indicated that the app could be used for mobile payments in store. This could mean that Facebook is seeking to reach far out and beyond communicating with people the users already know. At the time of the writing of this article, the company had yet to confirm or deny any of these claims.