Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) released its BBM Social Platform public beta, enabling developers to leverage the social discovery and sharing elements of its popular BlackBerry Messenger service, which boasts an active userbase in excess of 28 million. According to RIM, Java developers can now access APIs and features to build permission-based features that expand the BBM user experience beyond messaging and chat tools to encompass multimedia, gaming, location-based services, VoIP, video and commerce solutions. Developers can test workflow and BBM integration using special simulators for BlackBerry smartphones running OS versions 5.0 and 6.0.
RIM plans to expand BBM Social Platform support to the BlackBerry WebWorks platform in April 2011. WebWorks--introduced during the BlackBerry DevCon 2010 conference in September, alongside the BBM Social Platform--enables web developers to create full-featured BlackBerry apps entirely in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, bringing together existing BlackBerry web development tools along with new resources and platform services. RIM promises access to core BlackBerry features like multitasking, Push technology and Locate services as well as new web APIs and the BlackBerry Web Plug-Ins 2.5, giving developers the flexibility to start their application in the background, the homescreen or a download folder.
For more:
- read this Inside BlackBerry Developer's Blog entry
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