After a very brief stint at number one in the app store, Blackberry’s much-vaunted BBM messaging service — previously hailed as the saviour of the entire company — is now languishing in 462nd place on the App Store. But never fear! Because Blackberry is going to turn its fortunes around, by Snapchattifying its messaging service.
In the new beta version of BBM, Blackberry has announced “ultra-private” features, which will ensure that “what you share is yours to control — even once it’s left your phone.” Unless, of course, your friends have heard of screenshots, in which case you’re screwed.
The new features come in the form of a Snapchat-style timer, that can set your messages to expire after a certain number of seconds, and the ability to retract messages. Although the timer function certainly isn’t anything new — even Apple has had time to put that feature into iMessages — the ability to retract messages could turn out to be handy, if you accidentally send something you didn’t mean to.
Whether or not this will be enough to rescue a company that lost $US84 million last year remains to be seen. [Blackberry via The Next Web]