Version History BlackBerry Messenger: Texting set free
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Oct 12, 2025 
Joanna Stern, a technology columnist known for her engaging consumer tech commentary, and Nilay Patel, a tech journalist with deep insights into messaging history, dive into the fascinating story of BlackBerry Messenger. They explore how BBM revolutionized texting with features like read receipts and group chats, its peak popularity, the cultural impact among users, and eventual decline as competitors arose. The duo also discusses missed opportunities and what BlackBerry could have done differently to maintain its relevance in the tech landscape.
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BBM Filled A Real Messaging Gap
- BBM arrived when instant messaging was already mainstream on PCs and mobile messaging was expensive and unreliable.
- That timing let BBM feel instant, reliable, and dramatically cheaper than SMS for many users.
Server Architecture Powered BBM's Speed
- BlackBerry's server-centric architecture (enterprise servers handling traffic) made real-time mobile messaging feasible and fast.
- That technical design created BBM features like read receipts and reliability that SMS lacked then.
Movie Clip Explains BBM's Breakthrough
- A clip from the BlackBerry movie summarized the idea: texts sent via data bypass carriers, enabling free unlimited texting on BlackBerry.
- The hosts and Nilay confirmed that was essentially how BBM launched and spread rapidly.