RIM gives developers access to its Blackberry Messenger

MOBILE MESSAGING FIRM Research in Motion (RIM) has put its Blackberry Messenger (BBM) Social Platform into public beta.

RIM announced the BBM Social Platform at the Blackberry DEVCON last September, and now developers can add Super App features to their Blackberry applications in order to integrate into the BBM Social Platform. Developers have the ability to allow users to access and update their profiles, create custom areas where the developer can promote applications or achievements, initiate chat and file transfers and application to application background communications through BBM.

At present RIM says the BBM Social Platform beta is for Java developers only, though support for Blackberry Webworks developers is pencilled in for the next beta release, which it has scheduled to appear in April. Simulators for Blackberry OS 5.0 and 6.0 are included in the current release.

RIM's BBM has proven to be extremely popular, so it's not surprising that the firm wants to cash in on its success by giving developers access to try to enrich functionality. While BBM has helped RIM shift Blackberrys, it has also landed the firm in hot water with various national authorities around the world.

Nevertheless, developers will be glad to gain access to this popular messaging protocol as a way to generate apps sales. µ