Mar
25
BlackBerry Turns to Ads to Get Back In the Social Messaging Race
Posted in: Uncategorized
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.
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