Your New Features On BBM

BlackBerry just does not give up, and they shouldn’t. They still have vast potential and BlackBerry CEO John Chen knows it.

They just added a few new features to their social messenger BBM, which was rolled out from only BlackBerries to make them available for Android and iOS platforms as well. These two major new features are Message Retraction and Timed Message.

Message Retraction

How many times have you accidentally sent the wrong message to the wrong person? You can kill the awkwardness by simply retracting the message. Using the BBM app on a Samsung Galaxy S4, to retract a message you have to long press your finger over the particular message until an option to ‘retract message’,along with a ‘copy message’ one, pops up. However the person you’re retracting the message from must also have this version of BBM, otherwise nothing happens.

Where we’ve seen it: Wiper app. The messages you send to another Wiper user can be wiped off both your phones by you the sender if you want to. There is no way to get the messages back by both sender and receiver so there is no chance of the messages popping up again from nowhere. the best part is if the recipient takes a screenshot, you’re notified instantly. Sweet!

Timed Message

On BBM, users can now set a timer for their messages, which starts to countdown when the recipient reads the message. The timer can be set from between 1 to 30 seconds.

Where we’ve seen it: Telegram. The app has had a similar feature for a while now where you send a message to another Telegram user and it self-destructs after whatever time you set for it. Snapchat is another app that has a similar feature, only it works with pictures that get deleted after the timer runs out.

BBM Meetings

This is a similar take on Skype were users can hold video or voice mobile conferencing calls. BBM Meetings is a separate VoIP app that allows you to set a reminder and add up to 25 participants and when the time comes, they all automatically receive calls. The app allows BBM Chats, group chats and ofcourse the conference calls. You can even sync it with you phone calendar to set reminders. The business world may find this interesting.

This featured is currently only available on BlackBerry and Android operating phones as well as Mac products, but will ‘soon’ be available for iOS. Apple has some strict rules about third party apps so this may be the reason for the delay. You can download BBM Meetings from Google Play or BlackBerry World. It will cost you $12.50 per host per month though.

The new update also has an option to request for an HD version of an image sent to you.

Image Credit: The Mary Sue