MyBlackBerry: RIM Social Network Launches Tomorrow

Written by Steven Walling / July 13, 2009 2:46 PM / 2 Comments

Tomorrow, RIM will launch MyBlackBerry, community site for device owners to rate and review apps, as well as share tips and tricks. While indy sites like BlackBerry Forums and CrackBerry have long been active spaces for discussion, this will be the first officially-sanctioned online space for BlackBerry fanatics.

In the best of all possible worlds (for RIM anyway), MyBlackBerry will serve as a space for customers to provide support for each other. In the worst, MyBlackBerry will languish, as the lack of a vibrant ecosystem around BlackBerry apps becomes more apparent than ever.

By all appearances, MyBlackBerry will feature three basic social features:

Individual Profiles
Personal profiles for MyBlackBerry users will apparently center on the device you own, differentiating the experience for those who carry a Storm or a Bold from others who've signed up. Beyond that, what level of detail and user profiling is up in the air at this point, though it's likely to include a record of your personal contributions to the site.

App Ratings & Reviews
A key feature to MyBlackBerry will be ratings and reviews of applications, no doubt to try and bolster the excitement around RIM-specific apps, which has lagged behind significantly in comparison to the App Store. Once the site gets going, reviews should become an important outlet for BlackBerry apps developers.

Community Forums
If you watch the demo video, you can clearly see a forum-type function, whereby a threaded conversation can take place among BlackBerry owners for mutual support. In a success scenario for the community, this will become something like a more social version of the WordPress Codex.