It’s almost difficult to comprehend that BBM for Android and iOS is almost a week old now, considering how long it took to get there or how it almost never came to be. Still, BlackBerry remains quite ecstatic over the numbers that continue to flow that seem to prove to themselves and to the world that BBM still has a place and is here to stay.
Anyone’s who has been keeping in touch with mobile world probably already knows how wildly popular the BBM app has been, if one takes into account the raw download numbers. According to statistics coming from BlackBerry, the app has been downloaded 5 million times in the first 8 hours, and 10 million within the first day. It has also garnered a staggering amount of highly positive reviews, which could probably be reduced by half due to a large number of obviously faked and automated reviews.
However, download numbers are one thing and regular users are another, and even BlackBerry agrees. Now that the initial frenzy of launch day downloads is almost over, the company wants to shift its eyes towards actual usage numbers, to see if the over 20 million new BBM users will remain as part of BBM’s 80 million monthly active users. That will be the true litmus test as BBM attempts to reclaim its throne in a saturating messaging market. Of course, it probably helps that BlackBerry is officially saying that it is committed to keeping BBM free of charge, at least for the foreseeable future.
In the meantime, BlackBerry wants BBM to go viral and is making it extremely easy to do so. It’s new sharing tool is a simple landing page that lets people profess on Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail their new found love for BBM. A BBM PIN sharing page, on the other hand, makes it too easy to share and click on others’ PINs, which is probably somewhat akin to posting your phone number online. BlackBerry claims it still has a few cards to show and it might be interesting to watch the company try to carve out a name for itself once more.
SOURCE: BlackBerry
