by Muyiwa Matuluko
You can’t talk about the history of messaging
apps without mentioning BBM. BBM holds the honour of not only redefining
online messaging, it also inspired other now popular messaging apps.
This includes WhatsApp, which with over 700 million active users is now
more popular than the app which inspired it.
And it’s easy to see
why – WhatsApp happens to have a couple of essential features we take
for granted, which give it a better overall better User Experience than
BBM. This Inside Blackberry commenter was nice enough to point them out.
We have rewritten for context.
Here’s 5 WhatsApp features we wish BBM had
Super sharing capabilities
BBM
has a few limitations when it comes to sharing files between contacts.
Users can’t share multiple photos at once – they have to share them one
after the other. WhatsApp on the other hand lets users share 10 images
at time, both in group and person-person chats.
BBM also has
limitations in OS-wide sharing. For example, say you want to share a
file from your gallery or file manager to BBM, you only have the option
to share to single chats, not groups. WhatsApp will let you share both
to to groups and individuals.
Easier message history management
On
WhatsApp, your friends are able to select a particular message and
delete it. But on BBM, to get rid of a message, you have to DELETE the
whole conversation. This is perhaps a way of keeping people accountable
but, users should have a choice.
One other missing essential
feature this commenter failed to point out is search. On WhatsApp, you
don’t have to scroll through whole conversation threads just to find
some information from weeks ago – you can just search. This is
impossible on BBM.
Persistent emoticon/smiley tray
When
inserting emoticons/smileys in a message, you click on smiley icon, and
pick an emoticon, and the emoticon tray closes as soon as you’ve
selected a smiley. This is fine but sometimes (actually a LOT of times)
people want to be able to insert multiple-emoticons. And opening
emoticon tray every time is a pain.
This is not an issue on WhatsApp. The emoticon tray remains open and you can simply keep inserting emoticons until you are done.
“Delivered” and “Read” status for group and multiperson chats
BBM doesn’t display D and R notifications for group messages and multiperson chat messages. WhatsApp does.
No auto status updates without user’s consent
If BBM becomes more popular (like WhatsApp has 700m users), Blackberry are going to have a huge law-suit on their hands!
If
you download a sticker pack, or if you install BBM, or if you
uninstall/re-install BBM, BBM automatically updates your status “I just
bought XYZ sticker pack” “ABC just joined XYZ group”. These status
updates are WITHOUT user’s consent and there is no way to opt-out of
them. Right thing to do, ethical thing to do, is to allow user to
OPT-OUT of such forced status updates.
http://ynaija.com/5-whatsapp-features-we-wish-bbm-had/
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