It's hard to believe, but BlackBerry once had a huge headstart on the hottest new thing in tech. The Canadian device-maker unveiled BlackBerry Messenger, a mobile chatting platform, in 2006, three years before WhatsApp was even born.
But BlackBerry bet on its hardware---and lost. When handset sales plummeted, Messenger, later shortened to BBM, a service stuck on one operating system, saw rivals zoom past. WhatsApp claims 450 million users, next to 85 million for BBM. On the day that BlackBerry executives spoke with Ad Age, Tango, one of a cornucopia of popular messaging apps, picked up a $280 million investment from Alibaba and boasted a user base of 200 million.
Yet BlackBerry isn't surrendering. In October, BBM was opened up to Android and iOS, spurring 10 million downloads in one day, according to BlackBerry. A month later, the company launched BBM Channels, a social platform for individual users and companies built within the messaging application. Brands like Rolling Stone, Virgin Atlantic and MercedesAMGPetronas, the F1 racing team, added their own channels, which BBM subscribers can sign up to follow.
BlackBerry Turns to Ads to Get Back In the Social Messaging Race
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