By 
Over the weekend, you may have heard of an unfortunate episode that affected the official launch of Blackberry Messenger for Android and iOS. A leaked version of the application was made available to the eager public, except this build wasn’t one meant to be released.
A bug inside this build caused the million or so people who downloaded the app to put extra strain on Blackberry’s servers, rendering BBM inoperable for many people (including those using the service on devices like the Blackberry Q10 and Z10).
Unfortunately for us, Blackberry had to delay launch to figure out how to deal with the overload that this incident caused. Head of BBM Andrew Blocking has more details in regards to what happened, and gives us an update on when to expect the official arrival. Hint: it isn’t pretty.
The version we were planning to release on Saturday addressed these issues, however we could not block users of the unreleased version if we went ahead with the launch.
We attempted to address the problems caused by the unreleased version throughout the day on Saturday, but as active users of the unreleased app neared a million – and accelerated – it became clear that the only way to address the issue was to pause the rollout for both Android and iPhone.
The team will have to make some system-level changes that will be able to detect and block certain versions of the app to ensure users aren’t using unofficial versions. It’s not a simple task, Blocking says, with the software engineer telling folks that there is no ETA on another attempt to launch. It certainly won’t be this week, and they aren’t promising it will be next week or the week after that.
Simply put, we’re in limbo. Blackberry Messenger is still not released, and we don’t know when it will be. At this point, we’re starting to lose the little bit of interest we had left (as Raveesh clearly stated in a spirited rant about the whole ordeal this past weekend).
[via Blackberry]
That’s ok, no one was planning to use it anyway.
LOL. That is the first rule in the book.
1. Set the version app side with an interrupt to the app to force an update if it is outdated.
2. Set the version server side.
3. Check all requests server side to ensure that they are from a valid app version.
4. If they are not valid, respond with a message to force update in the app.
It appears that BBM made a rookie mistake on step 1! hahaha
Not at all surprised. The company has been tanking since the OS5.1 release when it locked a number people’s BB Bolds up.
Why Is this still even relevant???? All the “former” bbm users that I know now either have androids or have flocked to apple’s proprietary imessage app. Blackberry’s been dead for some time now; give it a rest.
some of my idiotic friends still use blackberry for the sake of BBM.
I stopped giving a f*** about it a loooong time back.
Blackberry is doing this just for promotional purposes.
Blackberry is going to go full enterprise. In other words, you wont be able to just walk into a store and purchase one. I thought it was the beginning of the end a while back but hmm.
It’s not *going* full enterprise. it’s just leaving everything else first so they can dump enterprise last.
epic failure, they couldnt just make an app force update to the latest version and presto….
so many apps do that already but rim engineers seem uncapable of doing simple things….
You guys are a joke. Whenever BBM comes out, you guys are still going to use it, so shut the f*** up! Seriously, you think the world is going to end if you don’t get this now. Entitled little pricks.
0.o
Nah, still won’t use it, butthurt little prick! (See? I can cuss like a 4th grader too!)
No, I’m not going to use it. I have absolutely no reason to. I don’t know a single friend or family member who has a BlackBerry, and with this latest debacle I can’t imagine any of them wanting to.
Wow – that’s the end for BBM then…
imo
Work phone is still a BB… Changing over to Android ASAP. Might have to buy the boss a case of beer as a bribe…
I really want blackberry messenger on android. Imessage is iPhone specific. Bbm is/was blackberry specific. I want a messaging client that is cross platform and secure.
get whatsapp!!!
Yeah…no…what’s app collects your phone number, I don’t want AF agencies calling my phone, offering me bogus cruises…
Whatts app has no privacy what so ever. Anybody can have your number and follow your status updates and download your pics and you wont even know. Until whattsapp fixes this they will still be a last resort which is what they are now.
If they can’t detect and prevent malicious copycat apps, it doesn’t speak well of the legendary Blackberry security, does it?
Failberry
What a shambles. No wonder BlackBerry is in the toilet.
Patience? The ONLY reason we don’t have it is because Android users didn’t have any PATIENCE from the beginning. It’s our own faults, not Blackberry.
Why do Android users even need BBM messenger?
Why do you need whatsapp, kik, etc.? I rather have it over not because I get options. And normally BBM is more secure than the others.
Don’t use any of those. And nothing is truly secure in this world we live in.
You use Hangouts then? Well there’s a few of us that need multi platform messaging apps that aren’t contained to one OS.
It’s obvious nothing is truly secure, but the methods used by BBM are better than the others.
Patience is what brought down to their present situation. Still somehow i feel this new buyout thats in the news has something to do with the delay of this app.
My bb rep came into the store today and said it should be released this saturday if all goes as planned, not holding my breath…
Blackberry is dead people! Stop hunting for a ghost! Blackberry fell off a cliff 3yrs ago when they gave up on trying to keep up with the rest of the world.
RIM should’ve released the new software by now. A company struggling this much shows how much it has sunk since its peak.
The really strange thing is that somehow with 11000 employees and 15 years of experience they still don’t know how to properly do client/server.
Never heard such a pathetic excuse. WHY couldn’t they block the users of the leaked app? All they needed to do was reset the accounts and force them to download the official release of the app – which I’m sure they’d have been happy to do. Now they’ve effectively blocked everyone and the whole subject is rapidly becoming boring.
They should of released the app when they were supposed to 7 am (eat), it wouldn’t of leaked if they had stuck with their word and delivered on time, and even with the leak they could of just sent out the revised version that they had for release and it would of solved the problems the leaked app had, it simple, blackberry is just an unorganized bunch of people with 2.6 billion dollars,
Excuses excuses, they purposely sabotaged the launch in order to keep their stock prices below $9.00 so they could get acquired by Fairfax Financial. A successful launch would have brought a bit of confidence in their stock and it would have risen above $9.00. Fairfax would have stayed away because they $9.00 was probably their hard line.
Blackberry sold out their investors.
I agree with some other posts I have read. I don’t think it is coincidence that they were acquired and all of a sudden the release is blocked on Android and only a few ITunes stores have it briefly.
Other posts are correct about Play Store as well. Ever since the announcement in May I have seen many fake apps that use the BB logo floating around the store. Of course they offered adware junk, not even decent imitation text messaging software. Google should have stopped that a long time ago.
I know Whatsapp is popular but it has little to offer in the way of privacy and does not truly offer the level of confirmation for received and read texts as BBM does. I suppose at the point your business is busy laying off 40% of its employees in one day you really could not care less if your released a piece of software to competing platforms. Too bad BB did this to the chat community. Up until now they at least had scored some emotional points in the “underdog” and “sentimental favorites” categories. I think what they (did not) do this last weekend managed to erase all of those points.
This should of been titled most users don’t care if BBM ever hits Android.