BlackBerry to turn BBM secure-messaging system into subscription service

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/blackberry-to-turn-bbm-system-into-subscription-service/article33945300/

by noarchy • 9 years ago

66 51 9 years ago

fnbr2• 9 years 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

[2] https://ycharts.com/companies/BBRY/market_cap

seanp2k2• 9 years 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_• 9 years 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.

tornadoboy55• 9 years ago

Of those only WhatsApp and FB Messenger are globally relevant. (by that I mean have 1 billion+ users, globally distributed)

astrodust• 9 years 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.

Analemma_• 9 years 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.

fnbr2• 9 years ago

Also, Slack- if Lync wasn't as brutal to use, Microsoft would have stopped Slack dead.

Macha• 9 years 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-mess...

marssaxman• 9 years 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?

verelo• 9 years ago

Skype, anyone remember MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ...the list goes on! Companies have been winning and shortly after failing at this game for decades.

tdkl• 9 years ago

Well Apple already "has it", because iMessage is selling iDevices, which brings in more $ then a subscription.

dgfgfdagasdfgfa• 9 years 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.

jlgaddis2• 9 years 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.

qwrusz2• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

I missed something, can you please help me out? Who's the new competitor? Thanks.

charlesdm2• 9 years 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• 9 years 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.

MikeKusold• 9 years ago

Highlights from the article:

BlackBerry Ltd. is preparing to turn its once-proprietary BBM secure-messaging system into a subscription service that app developers can build into their software to allow for seamless, encrypted communications.
Developers who deploy the BBM SDK will be asked to generate their own encryption keys, meaning BlackBerry will not have the ability to turn over to law enforcement any messages sent through this system, even if compelled by a court order.

Essentially it appears that they are turning it into a Secure Messaging As A Service so that people can quickly add messaging into their apps without requiring the infrastructure.

akandiah• 9 years ago

Secure Messaging As A Service

It's not secure in a traditional sense. BB have agreements with some governments to provide them with data as they need it.

geofft2• 9 years ago

How is that possible if app developers are going to be generating their own keys that aren't in BlackBerry's possession?

(That is, I think your criticism is valid and correct for the existing BBM service, but that's not what's being described here)

problems3• 9 years ago

Developers who deploy the BBM SDK will be asked to generate their own encryption keys, meaning BlackBerry will not have the ability to turn over to law enforcement any messages sent through this system, even if compelled by a court order.

Doesn't the entire security of BBM rely only on a very short code, one which Blackberry can easily swap with a different key which they posses in practice? Very similar to Apple iMessage.

Also last time I checked their enterprise offering was essentially static Triple DES key only - is their public offering any better?

EDIT: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/04/blackberrys_g...

Looks like as of last year they used a single static key for all the BBM encryption. And it's in the hands of Canadian authorities already.

Do we have any reason to believe they have or will change this? Seems completely silly to me to use something this broken.

seibelj• 9 years ago

Even a company with as many blunders as BlackBerry must know that publicly saying it can't be decrypted, when in fact it could easily be decrypted, would be a terrible blow to the product.

problems3• 9 years ago

Headline is a bit misleading - it's subscription for developers using their API only, not for users.

SEJeff• 9 years ago

aka Signal, but more meh?

trome2• 9 years ago

Pretty much, might as well use the Signal Server API or OMEMO depending on what your trying to do.

Zhenya• 9 years ago

Except since it's paid, you'd get an SLA.

tn13• 9 years ago

It is hard to trust Blackberry anymore. I had their phone and loved it until they started selling crappy phones for iphone's cost.

No matter how awesome this service might be I am worried if BB would actually last long enough to provide it.

mtgx• 9 years ago

BaaS - backdoor as a service:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23265091

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/rcmp-blackberry-p...

jayess• 9 years ago

BBM is not secure. Why would anyone use it?

kadaj• 9 years ago

BBM enterprise is different.

SpikeDad• 9 years ago

Hmm. Are they going to roll over and provide decryption keys for their secure service as they did previously?

jlgaddis2• 9 years ago

At its peak ... encrypted e-mail and messaging system was the gold standard for security for enterprise and government customers, providing secure access for as many as 90 million users.

Until they gave in to some government's demands and showed that they could not trusted.

This seems, to me, to be one last "hail Mary" attempt to save the company. Blackberry (RIM) was at the top of the "smartphone" industry 10-15 years ago. It's too bad they couldn't adapt and stay relevant. I'd still happily be using my 8830 if I could.

djyaz1200• 9 years ago

This is a big deal! ...although yes very late in the game. Like it or not corporate buyers like brand names. Back in the day the saying was "no gets fired for buying IBM." Blackberry has a brand in secure enterprise communication and this will sell.

rchaud2• 9 years ago

For everyone on this thread saying "They should have done this years ago", they tried to. As early as 2010 some in the company knew that BBM could be huge as an independent. Then CEO Jim Balsilie spent 2011 trying to bring Mike Lazaridis (co-CEO; good decision!) and his team around the to idea of a cross-platform BBM, but they were dealing with the fallout from the BB Playbook failure around that time as well as significant PR issues due to BES server outages and public disclosure about providing the Indian and UAE governments access to BBM logs (or something like that).

Lazaridis primarily didn't want to separate hardware and software, so he focused on building BB10 to compete with iOS/Android. Ballsilie resigned from the company in 2012 after the new CEO Thorsten Heins dumped the x-platform BBM and put all their energies into the launch of the already-doomed BB10 phones in 2013.

More here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-inside...

A good book about the history of BB is "Losing the Signal". Covers the company up to around 2013.

BlackBerry to turn BBM secure-messaging system into subscription service

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