Does anyone still use bbm

This article is more than 2 years old. Consumer version of BBM will cease but app aimed at businesses will continue. Read more. End-to-end encryption is an optional feature, called Secret Chats, that you have to enable for each conversation. The service requires a phone number to sign up but does not share your number with contacts -- a handy feature for those trying to vet out potential Tinder matches.

Signal is a cross-platform messaging app that has made a name for itself thanks to its end-to-end encryption and has been endorsed by the likes of Edward Snowden for its security. Android users, please put down your pitchforks. The truth is, Apple's iMessage platform is really well done and seamless to use And that's the rub. In order to get the most out of iMessage, not only do you need an Apple device, but the people you talk to need to use Apple devices iOS or Mac.

If you trust Apple more than a third-party app developer, then iMessage is your answer. It was ridiculous and exhilarating. There was no difference for me at 15 between my physical relationship with this person and our life on BBM. If anything, the latter felt even more intimate and safe. Early messages on the Crackberry forum are full of people trying to sum up why BBM felt better to use than standard text messages. BBM helped create one of the most anxiety-inducing messaging features that still exists today: read receipts.

Read receipts were introduced alongside BBM in Colleagues knew when someone was available and could hear back instantaneously. But the read receipt function came back to bite me, a person who often reads a message and replies hours later.

Read receipts haunted me for years after I left BBM. I only just turned them back on through iMessage recently as an experiment. The only difference between my anxiety now and then is not having to deal with an angry, blinking red light at the top of my phone.

For all that made BBM sometimes frustrating to use, it gave me something I miss today: a private community. BBM felt like a tiny oasis in a growing field of social networks and sites that wanted everything to be bigger. Sites like Habbo Hotel and Twitter helped create the internet we know today, all based on giving people the ability to talk to one another. But BBM was different. The fact that it was on your phone, a thing that already feels incredibly personal because it lives in your hand, only strengthened that feeling.

Today, during a time when the internet feels too noisy, I find myself wistfully thinking about those early BBM group chats. It's the end of an era — an era that many thought already ended years ago. But for those who still want to "ping" their BBM-loving friends, there's a way to keep doing that.

BlackBerry stopped making its own phones in , but its messenger system, BBM, was still available in app form for Android and iOS devices. Create a closed social circle by establishing contact relationships through an invitation request and accept process via email, NFC or PIN.