Rumour – BBM Broadcast All coming to BB10

The rumour mill is a-buzz with a major BB10 update bringing back the Broadcast All option to BBM. 

In it’s current stated of options in BB10 bringing this feature back lends to possible unwanted notoriety for broadcast messaging. Previously, BBM Broadcast messaging acted very similar to text messaging does today – something I’m NOT looking forward to, amongst many others. For a mobile operating system, and a company that prides itself on security, and protecting its clients (both business and personal alike – akin to how the other mobile device fruit company views end users’ personal data as a security concern) I’m shocked at BBM lagging in certain features. 

BBM Ad sourced roughly 4yrs ago in Toronto on Yonge & Bloor stations – featured in an earlier blog entry long ago.

BBM – SPAM:

As the popularity of BBM grew exponentially, along with the security of the BlackBerry device became popular with no site of being able to be hacked, some people decided to wreck havoc on the world renowned BBM messaging causing nothing but annoyances and some concern to uninformed or just unaware of social spamming BlackBerry users, and this was on a global scale.

 

 

Some seemed harmless, like the above 2, basically mimicking the basic principle of email spam, of which even 10 years ago RIM had spam filters on provider based hosted BIS email accounts. Others became serious, even official like the one below … take note of the spelling mistake “Jim Balsamic” vs Jim Balsillie who was Co-CEO of a globally successful RIM at the time of this BBM message screen capture.

The BBM message in full is listed here …

BBM is shutting down at 12:00.   0clock tonight if you don’t broadcast this you’ll loose your contacts

Sorry guys  Apparently it is true, cause its happened to certain people already, so I’m not taking any chances !!

Message from Jim Balsamic (CEO of RIM Blackberry) we have had an over usage of user names on Blackberry Messenger. We are requesting all users to forward this message to their entire contact list. If you do not forward this message, we will take it as your account is invalid and it will be deleted within the next 48 hours. Please DO NOT ignore this message or blackberry will no longer recognize your pin. If you wish to re-activate your account after it has been deleted, a charge of 25.00 will be added to your monthly bill. We are also aware of the issue involving the pictures updates not showing. We are working diligently at fixing this problem and it will be up and running as soon as possible. Thank you for your cooperation.

Lastly other spam BBM Broadcast messages where just down right rude, like the one below. Not the kind of message you want filling your screen reading while beside your manager, a CIO, or even a CEO of the company you work for, especially if they’ve never received such BBM spam messages. Spam like this led to a lot of business that employed BlackBerry’s to have BBM blocked by IT Policy. And no I’m not going to paraphrase the message lol. 

BBM is a very powerful and timely messaging tool that offers more than just text based communication with the ability to share pictures, video, voice notes and even full music tracks. BBM also allows group messaging, separate shared calendar (isolated from your own main calendar), ability to have more than 1 host/manager of a BBM group, all of these features allow for immediate and efficient collaboration between 2 people or an entire team. 

Bringing BBM Broadcast messaging needs to bring with it more conscious controls to the end user, in hopes to reduce or eliminate these types of spam messages.

Suggested BBM Broadcast Controls & Administration: 

• Ability to turn off receiving Broadcast Messaging.
• Ability to turn off Broadcast Messaging, yet receive BBM Group Broadcast Messages.
• Report BBM Spam Messages. 
• Ability to queue a Broadcast Message for delivery(?)
• BlackBerry NOC to restrict Broadcast All messaging to 50 users or 5 groups(?)

BlackBerry to administer these reports, maybe a strike policy that will disable such spammers for 24hrs, a week, a month, and possibly indefinitely. Of course working with cellular providers so that their tech support teams can clearly see which user on their networks is blocked, why their blocked, and the messages or reason why their blocked, and providers can legally avoid refunds for the current month towards such spammers since they’ve abused a network service offering affecting the privacy of other users both internally and globally. 

I doubt this form of controls or administration would come but it would bring a peace of mind if BlackBerry would consider this.

Overall I’d love to have the Broadcast All feature come back to BBM, sometimes hitting up your crew to say an impromptu concert or party at the docks, beach or your place at the last minute would be nice to do or receive. BlackBerry … you’ve done great with BBM Voice, BBM Video and BBM ScreenSharing, please continue to make BBM cool again. 

BBM Its changed the way we do business; circa 2010.

PS: I vote for a new BBM feature, BBM Whiteboard for collaboration (screensharing mixed with bbm video/voice/chat and hand-drawn collaboration of shared documents or a blank whiteboard. 

BBM Spam sources: (via Google Search results)

NerdBerry Jim Balsamic screenshot.

BlackBerry Support Forums on 06-08-2011 08:25 AM.

CrackBerry Forum Post on 11-24-2009, 09:41 AM