Then continue the discussion after the webcast in our BlackBerry Developer Forums.  From 1 PM to 3 PM EST, we’ll be closely monitoring the forums for any questions, comments and feedback related to the BlackBerry Messenger Social Platform, replying as quickly as we can to foster a live discussion.

The webcast will cover the basics of integrating your BlackBerry 10 application with BlackBerry Messenger.  Learn about the benefits of the BBM Social Platform, including how to help increase the discovery of your application.  By the end of the series, you will be knowledgeable in the features of the BBM Social Platform and know how you can integrate them into your own application.

Topics Covered Include:

• Benefits of the BBM Social Platform
• Features of the BBM Social Platform Including:
  • BBM SP Invite To Download
  • BBM SP Profile Boxes
  • BBM SP User Profile
  • BBM Chat
  • Invoking BBM from Your Application

We hope you’ll be able to attend online or in person, but if not the session will be recorded made available for viewing shortly after the event.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Here with more exciting news is Victoria, who wants to tell you all about our just-announced BlackBerry Jam program! – Ed.

Over the past few years, one of the priorities for BlackBerry® Developer Relations has been growing community programs. We’ve worked to support, grow and promote BlackBerry Developer Groups, share more information, and help through our Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog and @BlackBerryDev Twitter account.

We also recently hosted several BBM Apps Hackathons to help get developers started with our Social Platform pieces. We’ve been focusing on building relationships and finding new ways to collaborate with our developer communities.

I’m very excited to tell you a bit about the “BlackBerry Jam” program that was unveiled at BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011. I think of BlackBerry Jam as a continuation of the promise that we are making to developers to keep listening, keep learning and keep sharing information back out to them.

So why did we call it BlackBerry Jam? It really goes back to jamming with your friends, your peers, and your family. It’s those conversations that lead to new ideas and new connections.

BlackBerry Jam really highlights our commitment to working closely with developers to become an important partner in their success. This program draws together the services and programs we have built that help developers with go-to-market and success strategies, as well as aligning our Web portals with the BlackBerry Jam focus of communication and partnership.

One of the areas close to my heart is the BlackBerry Jam Community program.

BlackBerry Jam Community will encompass a lot of the programs we are building, allowing us to reach out to the community, connect with our developers and have face-to-face time. The Support Forums, the meetup programs we’re involved in, the hackathons we’ve been hosting, our BlackBerry Developer Groups and global Developer Days will all be part of a larger BlackBerry Jam Session program.

This is a reinvigorated focus on “us”: RIM and our developers. A pledge to continue our focus on how we can collaborate, to listen and use the feedback you are providing to us, to meet you and have you meet us, to find new ways to learn from each other and to work with you to evolve our tools and the support system we have in place for you.

I, for one, cannot wait to get started. So, how would you want to work with us, to jam with us?

With the BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) v6.0 client now officially launched, we’re excited to announce that the BlackBerry® Partners Fund’s 2011 BlackBerry® Developers Challenge has just opened submissions for the ‘Most Addictive Social App Using the BBM Social Platform’ competition*! You can now test the apps you’ve been creating with the BlackBerry® Messenger SDK against the gold release of the BBM v6.0 client and submit them to the competition. If you haven’t created an app yet that integrates BBM features, you still have time to get to work. Submissions for the BBM competition close September 23rd and we’ve compiled a list of resources to help you get started:

Three-part webcast series: ‘Integrating with the BBM Social Platform, One Step at a Time’

• Step 1: Viral Distribution and the BBM Contact List
• Step 2: User Profile and Custom Profile Box
• Step 3: BBM Chat and Embedding Chat within your App

Blog posts:

• BBM Social Platform – Help Your App Go Viral!

Tools and Resources:

• Visit the BlackBerry Messenger Social platform landing page to download the latest BBM™ SDK and documentation. You can find the BBM v6.0 gold client in the BlackBerry App World™ storefront.
• Twitterview with Research In Motion® (RIM®) development experts on @BlackBerryDev – Tuesday August 2nd at 2:30pm EDT. Bring your BBM questions!

We look forward to seeing your creative ideas come to life through your apps! Submit your app to the ‘Most Addictive Social App Using the BBM Social Platform’ competition today and be among the first to be considered for an incentive prize package (see the terms and conditions). For more information on this year’s BlackBerry Developer Challenge, see http://www.blackberry.com/developers/challenge.

*No purchase necessary. Submission deadline: 11:59PM EST on September 23, 2011. See Terms and Conditions for complete details and restrictions. Void where prohibited.

After months of development and testing, we’re proud to announce the latest edition of the BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) Social Platform SDK 1.0 for Java®! We’d like to thank our dedicated development community for all your hard work and diligent bug reporting, which truly helped to shape the platform.

Now that this release of the SDK has been launched, you can start submitting your applications to the BlackBerry App World™ storefront. Remember, apps using the new BBM Social Platform need the user to have BBM 6 installed, which is currently still in beta. As such, apps received by July 8th, 2011 will be reviewed and, if approved, available for sale when the BBM v6.0.0 app itself is released!

We’ve seen a few changes and refinements to the platform since the last beta refresh and here’s what you can expect to see:

• Added the ability for an application to receive invitations from other users who are not on their contact list.
• Contact picker UI changed to improve selection of multiple contacts and multi-user chat.
• Added the ability to send a “join” invite to a user who does not have the app installed. They will see a download invite and after installing the app will receive a join invite.
• Added a new API to determine whether the app is running on the test platform or production platform.

To get started, download the newest version of the BBM Social Platform SDK 1.0 for Java from BlackBerry® Developer Zone. Next, compile and sign your app with this new build. For on device testing with this release of the BBM Social Platform SDK, you will need to upgrade to the latest BlackBerry Messenger 6.0 beta available on BlackBerry® Beta Zone.

New to BlackBerry® Beta Zone? No problem – just follow the steps in the blog post announcing support for on-device testing!

To get started with the BBM Social Platform and review all the supported features, be sure to check out BlackBerry Developer Zone’s BBM Social Platform page, and as always, stay tuned to the BlackBerry Developer Blog for more updates on the platform. Don’t forget to check out the BBM Social Platform SDK 1.0 for BlackBerry® WebWorks™ (Beta)!

Since this beta version provides developers with the ability to do on-device testing, developers now have the opportunity to perfect the BBM workflow in their applications well ahead of the official launch of the BBM Social Platform and BBM v6.0.0, which is slated for a summer release.

To get started, download the latest version of the BBM Social Platform beta from BlackBerry® Beta Zone. Next, compile and sign your app with this new build. Finally, download the beta version of BBM v6.0.0 – i.e. the 6.0 version of the BBM app itself – which is the version of BBM that will support apps using the BBM Social Platform.

New to BlackBerry Beta Zone? No problem – just follow these steps:

1. Go to www.blackberry.com/beta
2. Log in if you’re an existing beta user; if not, follow the instructions to register
3. Once logged in, go to “My Programs”
4. Select “(Consumer) BlackBerry Messenger 6.0”
5. Select “Yes, I would like to participate”, click Submit
6. Review the license agreement and if you agree with the terms, click “Agree”, then click Submit
7. Select the Downloads tab
8. Select “BlackBerry Messenger v6.0.0”

If you’re accessing BlackBerry Beta Zone from your BlackBerry smartphone, your next step will be to start the download and install the beta version of BBM v6.0.0 on your BlackBerry smartphone. Alternately, if you’re accessing BlackBerry Beta Zone from your computer, email the download link to yourself so that you can install it from your BlackBerry smartphone.

To get started with the BBM Social Platform beta and review all the supported features, be sure to check out BlackBerry Developer Zone’s BBM Social Platform page, and as always, stay tuned to the BlackBerry Developer Blog for more updates on the beta!

At BlackBerry® DEVCON 2010, Research In Motion® (RIM®) announced the BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) Social Platform. Today, the BBM Social Platform officially moves into public beta. BlackBerry platform developers can now start adding social Super App features to their applications, leveraging all the power that the BBM Social Platform has to offer!

With this beta release, developers have the ability to accomplish the following:

• access and update fields in the user’s profile such as status, avatar and personal message;
• create their own custom areas within the user’s profile for promoting recent application activity or storing trophies and achievements;
• initiate and embed chats with friends;
• initiate application-to-application background communication through BBM for sending and receiving application instructions, such as moves in a game or any other application state changes;
• initiate file transfers;
• the ability to share applications virally with friends in their contact list.

Included in this beta of the BBM Social Platform are special simulators for BlackBerry smartphone OS 5.0 and 6.0 that allow for simulation of BBM communication between two instances of the simulator. This gives developers the ability to test the exact workflow and BBM integration that they can expect to see on a live device.

While this current beta is for Java® developers only, BlackBerry® WebWorks™ developers will soon be able to get in on the action as well – stay tuned to the Inside BlackBerry Developer Blog for more details. In the next beta drop – slated for April 2011 – the BBM Social Platform is intended to include full support for the BlackBerry WebWorks platform, ensuring that BlackBerry WebWorks apps have access to all the same APIs and features that Java developers do.

To get started with the BBM Social Platform beta and review all the features supported, be sure to check out the BlackBerry Developer Zone’s BBM Social Platform page – and stay tuned to the BlackBerry Developer’s Blog for more beta updates!

Have you ever thought about adding Facebook integration to your existing and/or future BlackBerry® applications? Are you eager to integrate your BlackBerry applications with Facebook, but feel lost and don’t know where exactly to start?

If your answer is yes to either of these questions, I’m very excited to tell you that there is now a community-initiated, community-driven and open-source Java® Facebook SDK which will make your life much easier!

This SDK was initiated and created by an individual BlackBerry application developer in Indonesia, Eki Baskoro. It is now an open-source project under the MIT license, which makes it completely free to use and distribute. Although still in its infancy, some of the leading BlackBerry application developers, such as Motek Mobile, have already been using it to Facebook-enable many of their existing BlackBerry applications with ease.

In summary, this Java SDK serves nicely as a reference implementation of the Facebook OAuth 2.0 authentication mechanism, and also the new Facebook Graph API, so that developers don’t need to reinvent the wheel and implement their own set of APIs from scratch. In addition, a sample BlackBerry application is also included right out-of-the-box, which clearly demonstrates how to seamlessly integrate with Facebook using a set of handy built-in Java classes and factories (such as FacebookContext, User, Post, and so on).

For more information about this SDK, please visit the official website of the project. Or if you wish to jump directly into the source code, you can check it out from the Subversion repository, or download the zip bundle. Leave a comment and let us know how it worked out for you!