The release of the BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) Social Platform opens a gigantic world of possibilities to application developers. While some are obvious, such as allowing your users to chat with each other, others may be a little more subtle. This post is the first in a series that will talk about how to easily add social features to your application using the BBM Social Platform. And there’s no better time to update your app! The 2011 BlackBerry Developer Challenge is on, and submissions for the Most Addictive social app using the BBM™ Social Platform category will open later this summer.
One of the greatest benefits of the BBM Social Platform is enabling application developers to access the enormous social graph of their users. Friends often place a much greater level of trust in each other’s suggestions when compared to anonymous reviews and advertisements. With the BBM Social Platform, leveraging this ability to help expand your reach and increase your user base is so simple that I will demonstrate it here.
While you may or may not want to add social features to your app, there is one feature that every app should definitely implement: the “Invite to Download” feature. This feature is so easy to implement – and can have such a great effect on app reach and downloads – that there is really no reason not to take advantage. The idea is simple: The developer adds a button or menu item to their app that allows the user to invite a friend from BBM to download the application. The user, finding the app to be of great utility or enjoyment, decides that this app needs to be shared and selects the “Invite to download” option. Once selected, the user is presented with a list of users from their BBM list. After selecting a user, the rest is out of their hands (and yours), and the platform dutifully goes off and presents the invited user with a message stating that their friend would like them to download an application. Most importantly, it provides a link that will take the user directly to the app in BlackBerry App World™ for a quick and easy download.
What the inviter sees:
What the invitee sees:
All you need to do to enable this feature is to call the following code in Java® or BlackBerry® WebWorks™:
Java
MessagingService messagingService = platformContext.getMessagingService();
messagingService.sendDownloadInvitation();
BlackBerry WebWorks
var result = blackberry.bbm.platform.io.inviteToDownload(onComplete);
The first line for the Java code is just a call to the platform to obtain a reference to the Messaging Service, and isn’t necessary in the BlacKBerry WebWorks implementation. The sendDownloadInvitation() and inviteToDownload() methods are where the magic happens. The platform will automatically show the user a Contact Picker UI field populated with their BBM contacts who do not already have the app installed. The user can select a contact or cancel if they change their mind, either way, control is returned to your app as soon as the user makes a selection. This method should always be called as a response to a specific user request to invite their contacts to download your application.
Be sure to check out the KB article How to – Invite contacts to download your application using the BBM Social Platform for Java and WebWorks for more information, and register for our upcoming three-part Webcast series “Integrating with the BBM Social Platform, One Step at a Time”, where we will cover Download Invitations and more. We’ll follow up this blog post’s corresponding webcast with two more webcasts covering user profiles and embedded chat using the BBM Social Platform. See the details below for more information and register today!
Integrating with the BBM Social Platform, One Step at a Time
Step 1: Viral Distribution and the BBM Contact List
Date: Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Time: 2:00 PM EST / 11:00 AM PST
Register at:
http://webcast.streamlogics.com/audience/index.asp?eventid=98450433
Integrating with the BBM Social Platform, One Step at a Time
Step 2: User Profile and Custom Profile Box
Date: Thursday, July 21, 2011
Time: 2:00 PM EST / 11:00 AM PST
Register at:
http://webcast.streamlogics.com/audience/index.asp?eventid=69648378
Integrating with the BBM Social Platform, One Step at a Time
Step 3: BBM Chat and Embedding Chat within your App
Date: Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Time: 2:00 PM EST / 11:00 AM PST
Register at:
http://webcast.streamlogics.com/audience/index.asp?eventid=87217347
