I used to have a Blackberry but unfortunately lost my "BES status" with my employer. This was going back a few years, when Blackberries were still primarily used by corporate business people that were addicted to having push access to their office while traveling. At that time, they had fairly low-tech displays and from a consumer perspective, you really had very few choices for "fun" things that you could buy and add. Compared to the world of Palm, Windows Mobile, and Symbian... the pickin's were pretty slim. But, Blackberries were very durable and had the best mobile keyboards, battery life, and of course... push email. I used my Blackberry with Lotus Notes and it really couldn't have been much better. So the market perception back then was that Blackberries weren't "cool" for younger people, but they were "very" cool with business executives... almost a symbol of your status in the business world. Over the last several years, RIM has done a great job of bringing more "cool" factor to their world... with devices like the Pearl, and with compelling new applications. This new one is a great move on their part.

Yesterday, RIM announced a new Facebook application for Blackberries. It is not simply a web front-end, but a real application that taps the "push" nature of Blackberries. And the stroke of brilliance in this announcement is that they are using the tactics of their competitors against them. Microsoft understands the need to tap future buyers when they are young. They learned this from Apple in the K-12 school market. What kids grow up with, is what they will want when they become an income producing buyer. These companies make it very attractive for these markets to use their stuff, so that they produce a new crop of buyers at every graduation. Enter Facebook. If you aren't familiar with it, Facebook is THE application that all college students use to stay connected. It was originally only available to college students, but has recently been opened up to high school students and members at large. It is a phenominal social networking application, that brought some class back to what MySpace really started.

Facebook has a lot of what I'll call "virtual toys" that become pretty addictive. My kids want to check when they get home to see if anyone "poked them" or "wrote on their wall". Since my daughter has been in college, I've been a daily user so that I can stay connected with her. Its is a great tool... and it is pretty much a 100% penetration into the world of college students. RIM has now built a better Facebook by allowing the addictive connectedness that its users experience when they get back to their computer, to now be experienced real time, pushed, and wireless.

Facebook for Blackberry offers the following features:
• Receive notifications and messages automatically – Leveraging the BlackBerry platform's push-based architecture, notifications and messages are automatically sent to the user; the user can also set a unique alert (vibration and/or ringtone) for Facebook related content
• Quickly access essential features – Convenient onscreen icons let users quickly change their Status, upload a photo, add a friend, poke someone, write on a Wall, or send a message. Users can also quickly scroll through messages and notifications as they do with email messages
• Invite friends to join Facebook and accept new friend requests
• Quickly snap and post pictures along with a caption and tags – The photo upload feature is also integrated with the BlackBerry smartphone camera and photo management applications on the smartphone
• View the Status of friends
• Read, compose and reply to messages even while offline – If the user is out of wireless coverage, messages are queued until the user returns to an area of coverage

Blackberry owners can begin downloading Facebook for their Blackberry now.

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Mike - Been Converged?