14 DAY TRIAL // Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion has just announced that the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) Social Platform that it unveiled during the BlackBerry DEVCON 2010 is now available in a beta flavor.
According to the handset vendor, the new release should offer developers the possibility to start adding social Super App features to the software they built for BlackBerry.
The BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) Social Platform is available in a public beta, the company announced, being capable of offering a wide range of capabilities to devs.
Through the new beta release, developers will be able to accomplish the following:
- access and update fields in the user’s profile such as status, avatar and personal message; - create their own custom areas within the user’s profile for promoting recent application activity or storing trophies and achievements; - initiate and embed chats with friends; - initiate application-to-application background communication through BBM for sending and receiving application instructions, such as moves in a game or any other application state changes; - initiate file transfers; - the ability to share applications virally with friends in their contact list.
The new release also comes with special simulators for BlackBerry smartphone OS 5.0 and 6.0, so that BBM communication between two instances of the simulator can be simulated.
Through this feature, developers would have the possibility to the exact workflow and BBM integration that would be registered on a live device.
The first beta release of the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) Social Platform was intended only for Java developers, but the company aims at making it available for BlackBerry WebWorks developers too in the near future.
The company also announced that the next beta release of the software, set to arrive in April 2011, should bring full support for BlackBerry WebWorks in the BBM Social Platform , so that the same APIs and features are available for a wider range of developers.
The BlackBerry Messenger SDK Beta is available for download from Softpedia as well, via this link.