At BlackBerry Live, CEO Thorston Heins has announced a new social networking feature that will be built into BBM Chat. The channels feature will allow users to expand beyond their existing friendship circle. With over 60 million active users, the company aims to allow channels to serve as a medium for expression.
Top BBM Channels Features as mentioned on the official BlackBerry Inside blog
- Create a channel – Create, edit and publish in an instant, and there are no limits to the number of followers you can have in your channel. Securely manage your channel from either a BlackBerry smartphone or the web.
- Discover channels – BBM Channels includes a carousel that lets you discover new channels. You can share channel invites within a BBM chat, and people can be added or invited using the channel’s PIN or QR code.
- View – View profiles for each BBM Channel you choose to follow.
- Subscribe – Subscribing to a channel allows the channel owner to send you timely and relevant updates, giving the subscriber instant access to your news, deals, events or whatever you want to communicate. Subscribers can choose to receive notifications when new posts are available.
- Participate – Participate and engage in conversations with your favorite people or communities by “Commenting” and “Liking” posts from channels you subscribe to. Channel owners have the option to directly chat one-on-one with a subscriber.
- Monitor engagement – Easily use built-in measuring tools to assess and monitor follower engagement and interaction
The application and its related service is being initially rolled out as a beta but will be updated every 10 days with a final roll out towards the end of summer. You can get the BBM Channels beta for BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry Smartphones running BlackBerry OS 5 through 7.1 from beta.webapps.blackberry.com.