BlackBerry Messenger to die next month as users have ‘moved on’

After death of Yahoo Messenger, BlackBerry Messenger, popularly known as BBM, is also soon going to die, since users have now ‘moved on to other platforms’.

BlackBerry announced that its time to bid farewell as the consumer version of the beloved messaging service for BlackBerry fans, BBM is finally going away and will completely shut down on May 31, 2019, since the firm was unable to jump-start the usage of the service regardless of new features.

“Three years ago, we set out to reinvigorate BBM consumer service,” wrote Emtak, the firm that runs the former BBM service. “We poured our hearts into making this a reality, and we are proud of what we have built to date.

“The technology industry however, is very fluid, and in spite of our substantial efforts, users have moved on to other platforms, while new users proved difficult to sign on,” the blog post continued.

After BBM shuts down, users will no longer be able to open the app for viewing old messages, photos, or other files. Until its death date, users will be able to download photos, videos and files, but won’t be able to keep any stickers they have purchased or personalized emoji that they may have created with the company’s BBMoji service.

Moreover, the enterprise version of BBM, called BBMe, which is offered to corporate users is still alive. Only the consumer version of BBM will die in May. “Though we are sad to say goodbye, the time has come to sunset the BBM consumer service, and for us to move on,” the blog post read.

As explained by Business Insider, back when BlackBerry devices were popular, BBM served as default messaging service for those phones and was solely available on BlackBerry handsets, hence made customers stick to them.

However, BBM’s popularity went down after iPhone and Android-based devices took over and introduced other services such as iMessage, WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat and more. However, BlackBerry later also opened up BBM for iPhone and Android phones.

“We hope you will cherish many fond memories of BBM consumer service that helped shape messenger platforms to become what they are today.”