6 ms·

This would have been brilliant 10 years ago. If BBM was open to non-blackberries, it could have killed WhatsApp before it began. It's weird to think of how popu

by fnbr 10y ago

This would have been brilliant 10 years ago. If BBM was open to non-blackberries, it could have killed WhatsApp before it began. It's weird to think of how popular Blackberries & BBM was back in the day. I was in high school in 2007, and it was cool to have a Blackberry. BBM was how people communicated with their crushes. If Blackberry had the vision, they could have preempted much of the current craze for social messaging. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and it's entirely possible that opening BBM up would have radically cannibalized Blackberry sales. The article's comparison to Twilio is interesting. Twilio's market cap is 2.64B [1], while Blackberry's is 3.84B [2]. I'd bet heavily that Twilio overtakes Blackberry soon. [1]: https://ycharts.com/companies/TWLO/market_cap https://ycharts.com/companies/TWLO/market_cap [2]: https://ycharts.com/companies/BBRY/market_cap https://ycharts.com/companies/BBRY/market_cap

seanp2k2 10y ago
Yep. I doubt many people will care about this in 2017. The network effect they had 10 or even 5 years ago would have been a great sell, but you can get the same thing for free now, and all of your friends are probably already on one or more of the alternative services. Entering the market when WhatsApp / Line / WeChat / Telegram / Viber / Kik / Kakao / Weibo / Facebook Messenger / iMessage exist seems like a bad idea.
- mdm_ 10y ago
  But that's not who this product is competing with. From TFA: "Mr. Beard positioned the IP-based system as superior to similar services offered by competitors such as Twilio". It's an SDK for building secure voice and text communications into your applications, not a consumer IM service meant to compete with WhatsApp et al. (that would be the consumer BBM app, available in the App/Play Store). Knowing BlackBerry, they will probably be mainly targeting developers in the medical and financial industries with this product.
  - godzillabrennus 10y ago
    Doubt they still have enough expertise to pull this off and even if they do I think it'll have to operate on low Marin's and lose money for a while to get to scale. That's not something blackberry can stomach at the moment.
- tornadoboy55 10y ago
  Of those only WhatsApp and FB Messenger are globally relevant. (by that I mean have 1 billion+ users, globally distributed)
  - rootsudo 10y ago
    Basically Facebook owns Whatsapp, so it's only a matter of time of integration to get it under one app / bigger consumer base.
- astrodust 10y ago
  2007: "So, like, are you on BBM?" 2017: "Um, what's BBM?" Motherfucking Blackberry. How they managed to fly that ship into the sun we may never know, because that shit was hard to fuck up.
  - wallflower 10y ago
    > Everyone was utterly shocked. RIM was even in denial the day after the iPhone was announced with all-hands meets claiming all manner of weird things about iPhone: It couldn't do what they were demonstrating without an insanely power hungry processor; it must have terrible battery life, etc. Imagine their surprise when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it. It was ridiculous, it was brilliant. http://www.edibleapple.com/2010/12/28/rim-was-in-disbelief-following-the-introduction-of-the-iphone-in-january-2007/ http://www.edibleapple.com/2010/12/28/rim-was-in-disbelief-f...
    - rchaud 10y ago
      The story of their reaction to the iPhone is a bit more nuanced. It's fleshed out in more detail in the book "Losing the Signal" which is a look at RIMM from it's inception in the 1980s up to around 2013 when their market share had collapsed. Basically, both Lazaridis and Balsillie agreed that they should downplay the innovation in the iPhone when in public. Internally however, they were scrambling to build a competitor because Verizon told them to. RIMM's business was very heavily tied into US and international carriers and serving enterprise clientele, and none of them had asked for anything like the iPhone, so they just never bothered.
Analemma_ 10y ago
So many established players blew it on messaging. Microsoft could've had WhatsApp if they used their decade head-start to make Skype not suck so much. Google could've had it if they stopped rebooting their messaging strategy completely once a year and just stuck with something for a change (my vote would've been for Wave, but just pick something). Apple could've had it with iMessage if they didn't stick to the iPhone strategy tax. None of them saw how important it would be and are now scrambling to catch up.
- fnbr 10y ago
  Also, Slack- if Lync wasn't as brutal to use, Microsoft would have stopped Slack dead.
  - trome 10y ago
    Cue Lync eating all my ram :P
  - godzillabrennus 10y ago
    That's like comparing manure to apples. Lynch was an abomination to support, it was billed as a kind of a sip client and messenger combo but of course they Microsofted it. They didn't want an extension or phone number tied to it so people could only call you if you were in the same network and had the software installed.
- Macha 10y ago
  Another example, nobody hated aim as much as AOL did back in the early days: http://kellenprojects.com/2014/04/rise-fall-aol-instant-messanger/ http://kellenprojects.com/2014/04/rise-fall-aol-instant-mess...
- marssaxman 10y ago
  I'm surprised that Wave had a messaging system in it. As far as I could tell, it was just a weird collaborative outliner. How did you get to the messaging system?
  - 10y ago
dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago
This would be believable if it weren't for the fact that—ESPECIALLY in 2007 as a high school kid(!?)—it was absurd to buy a smartphone unless you were tied to email. It was just too expensive compared to, say, texting + the $50 flip phone. Plus, blackberry was ALWAYS lame.
- jlgaddis 10y ago
  > Plus, blackberry was ALWAYS lame. In high schools perhaps but certainly not in the corporate world. In a "promo", I got Blackberry Enterprise Server (some "Express" version, IIRC) and 15 device licenses when I got my first Blackberry (I was the first Blackberry user at $company). Within maybe 60 days or so -- after a few execs found out they could get their e-mail on a phone -- we were running the full BES product and constantly purchasing additional licenses to support more devices. A few years later, Apple announced this new product called an "iPhone" and it was all downhill from there.
qwrusz 10y ago
Just curious, why would you "bet heavily" Twilio overtakes Blackberry's market cap "soon"? It's an interesting view to have, considering you know Twilio's value has been free falling (they are down like -60% in the last few months) and as of this week they just gained a new competitor with more money than them. I have no clue what is going to happen, but wondering if I missed something as you seem pretty confident. Thanks
- CodeWriter23 10y ago
  I missed something, can you please help me out? Who's the new competitor? Thanks.
  - fredguth 10y ago
    +1 here. Who are they talking about?
- charlesdm 10y ago
  1. Focus. Twilio does communication. What does Blackberry do these days? Hell if I know, a bit of everything and nothing. They've lost a lot of credibility in a lot of enterprises after those companies moved over to iPhones and Androids. 2. Ease of integration. Also, related to that, is the encryption component really required? Most companies that have Twilio integrated aren't going to swap it out for this, I assume. Some might, most won't. It's more of a niche offering. There's a lot this Blackberry product can't do, because you need to integrate the key exchange in an app. Twilio handles functionality outside of apps (i.e. plain SMS and voice) as well. 3. Ramp up. Just because you announce a new product doesn't mean it'll be generating hundreds of millions in the next few quarters. It'll take years to ramp up + have it generating decent revenue. They haven't planted their seeds yet, so to say. 4. Momentum: Twilio might be down 60% after a massive run up after its IPO, but it looks like it the stock has found support now. Blackberry however is down over 96% from the height of 2007. 5. Acquisition potential. They're close to Amazon. I wouldn't be surprised if they acquire the company within the next 6-12 months. Unsure as to how this will play out, but I'm more bullish on Twilio than I am on Blackberry. Actually, I just bought some shares last month at $28.
Sarkie 10y ago
100% this but the thing that's missing, is BBM's Pin feature. WhatsApp still don't have that. You used to be able to give out your pin and not your phone number and used to be able to sign up for mailing list / nightclub entry without your number passing anyone's hands.

by fnbr 10y ago

seanp2k2 10y ago

Yep. I doubt many people will care about this in 2017. The network effect they had 10 or even 5 years ago would have been a great sell, but you can get the same thing for free now, and all of your friends are probably already on one or more of the alternative services. Entering the market when WhatsApp / Line / WeChat / Telegram / Viber / Kik / Kakao / Weibo / Facebook Messenger / iMessage exist seems like a bad idea.

mdm_ 10y ago
But that's not who this product is competing with. From TFA: "Mr. Beard positioned the IP-based system as superior to similar services offered by competitors such as Twilio". It's an SDK for building secure voice and text communications into your applications, not a consumer IM service meant to compete with WhatsApp et al. (that would be the consumer BBM app, available in the App/Play Store). Knowing BlackBerry, they will probably be mainly targeting developers in the medical and financial industries with this product.
- godzillabrennus 10y ago
  Doubt they still have enough expertise to pull this off and even if they do I think it'll have to operate on low Marin's and lose money for a while to get to scale. That's not something blackberry can stomach at the moment.
tornadoboy55 10y ago
Of those only WhatsApp and FB Messenger are globally relevant. (by that I mean have 1 billion+ users, globally distributed)
- rootsudo 10y ago
  Basically Facebook owns Whatsapp, so it's only a matter of time of integration to get it under one app / bigger consumer base.
astrodust 10y ago
2007: "So, like, are you on BBM?" 2017: "Um, what's BBM?" Motherfucking Blackberry. How they managed to fly that ship into the sun we may never know, because that shit was hard to fuck up.
- wallflower 10y ago
  > Everyone was utterly shocked. RIM was even in denial the day after the iPhone was announced with all-hands meets claiming all manner of weird things about iPhone: It couldn't do what they were demonstrating without an insanely power hungry processor; it must have terrible battery life, etc. Imagine their surprise when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it. It was ridiculous, it was brilliant. http://www.edibleapple.com/2010/12/28/rim-was-in-disbelief-following-the-introduction-of-the-iphone-in-january-2007/ http://www.edibleapple.com/2010/12/28/rim-was-in-disbelief-f...
  - rchaud 10y ago
    The story of their reaction to the iPhone is a bit more nuanced. It's fleshed out in more detail in the book "Losing the Signal" which is a look at RIMM from it's inception in the 1980s up to around 2013 when their market share had collapsed. Basically, both Lazaridis and Balsillie agreed that they should downplay the innovation in the iPhone when in public. Internally however, they were scrambling to build a competitor because Verizon told them to. RIMM's business was very heavily tied into US and international carriers and serving enterprise clientele, and none of them had asked for anything like the iPhone, so they just never bothered.

Analemma_ 10y ago

So many established players blew it on messaging. Microsoft could've had WhatsApp if they used their decade head-start to make Skype not suck so much. Google could've had it if they stopped rebooting their messaging strategy completely once a year and just stuck with something for a change (my vote would've been for Wave, but just pick something). Apple could've had it with iMessage if they didn't stick to the iPhone strategy tax. None of them saw how important it would be and are now scrambling to catch up.

fnbr 10y ago
Also, Slack- if Lync wasn't as brutal to use, Microsoft would have stopped Slack dead.
- trome 10y ago
  Cue Lync eating all my ram :P
- godzillabrennus 10y ago
  That's like comparing manure to apples. Lynch was an abomination to support, it was billed as a kind of a sip client and messenger combo but of course they Microsofted it. They didn't want an extension or phone number tied to it so people could only call you if you were in the same network and had the software installed.
Macha 10y ago
Another example, nobody hated aim as much as AOL did back in the early days: http://kellenprojects.com/2014/04/rise-fall-aol-instant-messanger/ http://kellenprojects.com/2014/04/rise-fall-aol-instant-mess...
marssaxman 10y ago
I'm surprised that Wave had a messaging system in it. As far as I could tell, it was just a weird collaborative outliner. How did you get to the messaging system?
- 10y ago

dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago

This would be believable if it weren't for the fact that—ESPECIALLY in 2007 as a high school kid(!?)—it was absurd to buy a smartphone unless you were tied to email. It was just too expensive compared to, say, texting + the $50 flip phone. Plus, blackberry was ALWAYS lame.

jlgaddis 10y ago
> Plus, blackberry was ALWAYS lame. In high schools perhaps but certainly not in the corporate world. In a "promo", I got Blackberry Enterprise Server (some "Express" version, IIRC) and 15 device licenses when I got my first Blackberry (I was the first Blackberry user at $company). Within maybe 60 days or so -- after a few execs found out they could get their e-mail on a phone -- we were running the full BES product and constantly purchasing additional licenses to support more devices. A few years later, Apple announced this new product called an "iPhone" and it was all downhill from there.

qwrusz 10y ago

Just curious, why would you "bet heavily" Twilio overtakes Blackberry's market cap "soon"? It's an interesting view to have, considering you know Twilio's value has been free falling (they are down like -60% in the last few months) and as of this week they just gained a new competitor with more money than them. I have no clue what is going to happen, but wondering if I missed something as you seem pretty confident. Thanks

CodeWriter23 10y ago
I missed something, can you please help me out? Who's the new competitor? Thanks.
- fredguth 10y ago
  +1 here. Who are they talking about?
charlesdm 10y ago
1. Focus. Twilio does communication. What does Blackberry do these days? Hell if I know, a bit of everything and nothing. They've lost a lot of credibility in a lot of enterprises after those companies moved over to iPhones and Androids. 2. Ease of integration. Also, related to that, is the encryption component really required? Most companies that have Twilio integrated aren't going to swap it out for this, I assume. Some might, most won't. It's more of a niche offering. There's a lot this Blackberry product can't do, because you need to integrate the key exchange in an app. Twilio handles functionality outside of apps (i.e. plain SMS and voice) as well. 3. Ramp up. Just because you announce a new product doesn't mean it'll be generating hundreds of millions in the next few quarters. It'll take years to ramp up + have it generating decent revenue. They haven't planted their seeds yet, so to say. 4. Momentum: Twilio might be down 60% after a massive run up after its IPO, but it looks like it the stock has found support now. Blackberry however is down over 96% from the height of 2007. 5. Acquisition potential. They're close to Amazon. I wouldn't be surprised if they acquire the company within the next 6-12 months. Unsure as to how this will play out, but I'm more bullish on Twilio than I am on Blackberry. Actually, I just bought some shares last month at $28.

Sarkie 10y ago

100% this but the thing that's missing, is BBM's Pin feature. WhatsApp still don't have that. You used to be able to give out your pin and not your phone number and used to be able to sign up for mailing list / nightclub entry without your number passing anyone's hands.