[chrysaurora]

There are two reasons my friends have NOT given up on WhatsAPP. These are such basic/simple reasons to address and I have emailed BlackBerry countless times about these things. They replied that they agreed with my suggestions (4+ months ago) and yet they haven't implemented them.

Reason 1 # Easy sharing of pictures, videos, files in Group Chat (and/or Multi Person Chat).
In WhatsApp, if you are in a group chat, you can send picture, video etc. It appears as thumbnail in the chat window itself.

But in BBM group chat, you've to EXIT chat, go to Groups, go to Albums and upload picture. You can't upload videos at all.

Now, I LIKE this separation of group alubms and I like that people are able to comment on each picture separately etc. But come on, how hard is it to add a SHORTCUT in group-chat window menu? "Send Picture" or "Send Video". That short-cut should automatically upload picture to Group Album and show a thumbnail in the Chat-Window. Why force user to EXIT the group chat in the first place?

Reason 2 # For some reason, BBM Cross-Platform's message delivery is still not as reliable as WhatsApps. WhatsApp was also VERY VERY unreliable (delayed delivery etc) first year or so of its existence but it has become very reliable. When I send message to my BBM friends on IOS/Android, sometimes my message doesn't get delivered. So, I send it via WhatsApp and it's instantly delivered. WhatsAPP had same problems initially but they figured out a way to fix this to an extent that it is a rare occurrence now. BBM needs to fix it ASAP too.

There are other small reasons (like BBM emoticons are too small, they should be slightly bigger, some ios/Android user claim that BBM app is laggy, Inviting contacts to BBM is not as intuitive as it is in WhatsApp which basically auto-adds all contacts etc.). But those are minor reasons and can be fixed with under-the-hood performance improvements. But as far as features go - these are the TWO top reasons my friends are still using WhatsApp and BlackBerry has so far refused to fix them even after acknowledging that they agree and will work on them.

I have had conversation with Senior folks at BBM group (Product Manager, Director etc) via email, they have responded via email. I sent detailed feedback with screenshot and suggested work-flow. They agreed. And yet, 4 months later BBM 2.0 lacks these features.

NOTE - If you work for BlackBerry, I'd appreciate if you could forward this feedback (yet again) to BBM Product Manager, Director, Enterprise VP and even John CHEN. . Please.

BlackBerry, you are literally giving away market you could OWN! Wake up, whomsoever is responsible for BBM, and get it done. You can own this market in no time. Don't wake up too late! Wake up now!!

[BBstarBB]

Whats up with them?.

[anon(3896606)]

Sent it to Jeff Gadway (BBM Product Marketing) over Twitter, great recommendations!

[axeman1000]

Well for number two chances are the message forwarding has more to do with iPhone and Android servers and the way the are handled. As for sending and delivered through whatsapp, aside from seeing your friends device right in front of you, how did you get a notification it was delivered? Whatsapp doesn't do that feature.

Hate solves nothing, Respect gains everything!

[RubberChicken76]

There are two reasons my friends have NOT given up on WhatsAPP. These are such basic/simple reasons to address and I have emailed BlackBerry countless times about these things. They replied that they agreed with my suggestions (4+ months ago) and yet they haven't implemented them.

Reason 1 # Easy sharing of pictures, videos, files in Group Chat (and/or Multi Person Chat).
In WhatsApp, if you are in a group chat, you can send picture, video etc. It appears as thumbnail in the chat window itself.

But in BBM group chat, you've to EXIT chat, go to Groups, go to Albums and upload picture. You can't upload videos at all.

Now, I LIKE this separation of group alubms and I like that people are able to comment on each picture separately etc. But come on, how hard is it to add a SHORTCUT in group-chat window menu? "Send Picture" or "Send Video". That short-cut should automatically upload picture to Group Album and show a thumbnail in the Chat-Window. Why force user to EXIT the group chat in the first place?

Reason 2 # For some reason, BBM Cross-Platform's message delivery is still not as reliable as WhatsApps. WhatsApp was also VERY VERY unreliable (delayed delivery etc) first year or so of its existence but it has become very reliable. When I send message to my BBM friends on IOS/Android, sometimes my message doesn't get delivered. So, I send it via WhatsApp and it's instantly delivered. WhatsAPP had same problems initially but they figured out a way to fix this to an extent that it is a rare occurrence now. BBM needs to fix it ASAP too.

There are other small reasons (like BBM emoticons are too small, they should be slightly bigger, some ios/Android user claim that BBM app is laggy, Inviting contacts to BBM is not as intuitive as it is in WhatsApp which basically auto-adds all contacts etc.). But those are minor reasons and can be fixed with under-the-hood performance improvements. But as far as features go - these are the TWO top reasons my friends are still using WhatsApp and BlackBerry has so far refused to fix them even after acknowledging that they agree and will work on them.

I have had conversation with Senior folks at BBM group (Product Manager, Director etc) via email, they have responded via email. I sent detailed feedback with screenshot and suggested work-flow. They agreed. And yet, 4 months later BBM 2.0 lacks these features.

NOTE - If you work for BlackBerry, I'd appreciate if you could forward this feedback (yet again) to BBM Product Manager, Director, Enterprise VP and even John CHEN. . Please.

BlackBerry, you are literally giving away market you could OWN! Wake up, whomsoever is responsible for BBM, and get it done. You can own this market in no time. Don't wake up too late! Wake up now!!

Part of the issue might be that even if they love your suggestions, they may have a long list of features they have to work on besides pulling off a couple of developers to work on the features you personally would like.

As for telling them to wake up... I hear Andrew Bocking resigned. Perhaps you should apply for the job and lead the team to greatness?

Posted via CB10

[chrysaurora]

Well for number two chances are the message forwarding has more to do with iPhone and Android servers and the way the are handled. As for sending and delivered through whatsapp, aside from seeing your friends device right in front of you, how did you get a notification it was delivered? Whatsapp doesn't do that feature.

Hate solves nothing, Respect gains everything!

I don't know what is it with people questioning everything. Delayed message delivery is a real problem. Ask 10 ios/Android users and see how many admit that they see delayed message deliveries. Sometimes ios/Android users don't get BBM messages for hours!

Anyhow, to answer your question, I have tested it as follows -

I message friend sitting in other room on BBM. It doesn't show any D. So, I send a message on WhatsApp, and my friend replies right away to my question. I ask my friend, why don't you reply on BBM and he goes, no message on BBM. And then 2 hours later.. 'dude, just got your message on BBM'. Variation of this happens more than once every week since cross-platform BBM came out. With WhatsApp this happens like once in few months now!

Now, I am not saying it happens all the time. But it seems to happen a LOT MORE than it happens on WhatsApp. Two years ago, this was a common problem with WhatsApp too. But over the years, WhatsApp has (clearly) worked hard on figuring out how to quickly deliver messages. They have figured out how to make it work on iOS/Android. BlackBerry can do the same. BlackBerry has some uber talented folks working for them, they can nail this. But first step is to acknowledge this is an ISSUE and then put a crack team of uber elite developers to fix it.

[crackberry_geek]

I don't know what is it with people questioning everything. Delayed message delivery is a real problem. Ask 10 ios/Android users and see how many admit that they see delayed message deliveries. Sometimes ios/Android users don't get BBM messages for hours!

Anyhow, to answer your question, I have tested it as follows -

I message friend sitting in other room on BBM. It doesn't show any D. So, I send a message on WhatsApp, and my friend replies right away to my question. I ask my friend, why don't you reply on BBM and he goes, no message on BBM. And then 2 hours later.. 'dude, just got your message on BBM'. Variation of this happens more than once every week since cross-platform BBM came out. With WhatsApp this happens like once in few months now!

Now, I am not saying it happens all the time. But it seems to happen a LOT MORE than it happens on WhatsApp. Two years ago, this was a common problem with WhatsApp too. But over the years, WhatsApp has (clearly) worked hard on figuring out how to quickly deliver messages. They have figured out how to make it work on iOS/Android. BlackBerry can do the same. BlackBerry has some uber talented folks working for them, they can nail this. But first step is to acknowledge this is an ISSUE and then put a crack team of uber elite developers to fix it.

Exactly... I've experienced the same.

BBM reliability sucks... and Whatsapp doesn't.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to send Whatsapp message to ask "did you get my BBM?"

I've never had to do the oppsite.

BlackBerry... I loved you... and no one wanted to see you succeed more than me... but sadly in today's world... you S-U-C-K!!

Posted with Z10 via CB10

[Jas00555]

I don't use BBM since it's not cross platform and my friends will switch messaging apps before they switch phones.

Sent from my RM-821_eu_france_267 using Tapatalk

[rohetaku]

Dude! These to complaints are spot on and they're the sole reason why my fam has stayed on a whatsapp group instead of bbm group.

I made everybody switch but they went back because of these issues exactly.

I love how bbm doesn't include the pictures on the chat and it let's us comment on them directly but BlackBerry needs to at least put a lil thumb nail that let's us know it happened. This would be a great improvement!

Posted via CB10

[Hilman76]

Exactly... I've experienced the same.

BBM reliability sucks... and Whatsapp doesn't.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to send Whatsapp message to ask "did you get my BBM?"

I've never had to do the oppsite.

BlackBerry... I loved you... and no one wanted to see you succeed more than me... but sadly in today's world... you S-U-C-K!!

Posted with Z10 via CB10

Dam that is funny/ironic.

[tmf06]

Exactly... I've experienced the same.

BBM reliability sucks... and Whatsapp doesn't.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to send Whatsapp message to ask "did you get my BBM?"

I've never had to do the oppsite.

BlackBerry... I loved you... and no one wanted to see you succeed more than me... but sadly in today's world... you S-U-C-K!!

Posted with Z10 via CB10

Funny, but I pretty much stopped using what's app for the same reason you stopped using bbm. I would get messages several hours later. I have convinced most of my contacts to use bbm. I know from my side (blackberry user) there aren't any delays, but I guess I will need to ask my ios and android contacts if they have had issues.

Posted via CB10

[anon(153966)]

Remember when someone suggest an idea etc. to a company, it takes time to analyze and thus put into action. So time will tell...

[karaya1]

The first point about the photos is the same reason one of my groups still uses whatsapp.

Posted via CB10

[madcat72]

Personally I can't stand whatsapp, but I agree BlackBerry has to get their bbm cross platform to a top notch performance.

[Tank1978]

There are two reasons my friends have NOT given up on WhatsAPP. These are such basic/simple reasons to address and I have emailed BlackBerry countless times about these things. They replied that they agreed with my suggestions (4+ months ago) and yet they haven't implemented them.

Reason 1 # Easy sharing of pictures, videos, files in Group Chat (and/or Multi Person Chat).
In WhatsApp, if you are in a group chat, you can send picture, video etc. It appears as thumbnail in the chat window itself.

But in BBM group chat, you've to EXIT chat, go to Groups, go to Albums and upload picture. You can't upload videos at all.

Now, I LIKE this separation of group alubms and I like that people are able to comment on each picture separately etc. But come on, how hard is it to add a SHORTCUT in group-chat window menu? "Send Picture" or "Send Video". That short-cut should automatically upload picture to Group Album and show a thumbnail in the Chat-Window. Why force user to EXIT the group chat in the first place?

Reason 2 # For some reason, BBM Cross-Platform's message delivery is still not as reliable as WhatsApps. WhatsApp was also VERY VERY unreliable (delayed delivery etc) first year or so of its existence but it has become very reliable. When I send message to my BBM friends on IOS/Android, sometimes my message doesn't get delivered. So, I send it via WhatsApp and it's instantly delivered. WhatsAPP had same problems initially but they figured out a way to fix this to an extent that it is a rare occurrence now. BBM needs to fix it ASAP too.

There are other small reasons (like BBM emoticons are too small, they should be slightly bigger, some ios/Android user claim that BBM app is laggy, Inviting contacts to BBM is not as intuitive as it is in WhatsApp which basically auto-adds all contacts etc.). But those are minor reasons and can be fixed with under-the-hood performance improvements. But as far as features go - these are the TWO top reasons my friends are still using WhatsApp and BlackBerry has so far refused to fix them even after acknowledging that they agree and will work on them.

I have had conversation with Senior folks at BBM group (Product Manager, Director etc) via email, they have responded via email. I sent detailed feedback with screenshot and suggested work-flow. They agreed. And yet, 4 months later BBM 2.0 lacks these features.

NOTE - If you work for BlackBerry, I'd appreciate if you could forward this feedback (yet again) to BBM Product Manager, Director, Enterprise VP and even John CHEN. . Please.

BlackBerry, you are literally giving away market you could OWN! Wake up, whomsoever is responsible for BBM, and get it done. You can own this market in no time. Don't wake up too late! Wake up now!!

Exactly!!! I have a group chat on bbm and one guy convinced them back to whatsapp cause of the video and picture sharing in app... I also like the separation of pics, but would be a great option to either separate it or share in app and have it filed or saved in group pics

Posted via CB10

[TioPepe78]

Totally agree with both points, for point 2 yes, there seems to be some difficulties yet with both ios and android, like you said OP like in the early days of Whatsapp, I remember sometimes messages never reached destination, I do believe that BB will solve this issues.

As for point 1, I would like to have the same model of groups but instead of having a picture block it could be called Media where you can upload pictures, files, video, anything... and your idea to put a link to that from the chat is very nice touch, I don't think is very hard to do for BB the problem I guess they have is servers and network capacity for this, but they should beta test at least with voice notes which I thing won't have too much of a load to servers and network.

I suggested even a cloud service around this a couple of days ago http://forums.crackberry.com/general...s-plus-906582/ that could be a way of monetizing BBM and improve this feature of groups.

In the end fortunately at least for me and my group of people video, voice notes in groups are not a common thing so is not a big deal but OP is right, I've showed BBM to some people and one of the first things they notice is that they can just upload pictures and they don't get in the stream of the conversation in the chat.

[fashigidig]

I've experienced a similar delay in delivery over BBM, and I think the main culprit is the app being closed in the background of andriod and iOS to clear memory. For android, if you don't keep the icon on in the taskbar, the app will close and NOT run in the background. The person has to open BBM again to receive messages. I'm pretty sure it's the same issue on iOS.

If your android and iOS friends don't use the app often, the app will eventually close and they will miss notifications if the app is closed in the background by the operating system itself to clear up memory. I'm no developer or expert, just my experience. Once, I made sure to enable background notifications on my wife's android (by keeping the icon in the taskbar there) she never had delivery issues again.

So, it may just be the way different OS's handle memory and third party apps in the background, especially if the app isn't used often enough.

[Fnen90]

U are right!

Posted via CB10

[anon(4044683)]

So far my BBM experience with BB to Android has been fantastic but BBM has serious reliability issues at-least with ios. Messages to Android mostly gets delivered instantly but ios is not the same. Every time I have to message my ios friends on WhatsApp to check my BBM message, for some reasons they don't get notified. Why so much hate for WhatsApp ? I don't understand. I think they are doing pretty well and do not deserve so much hate.

[fishballer]

Spot on! BBM on android and IOS is very slow in terms of receiving and sending messages. Plus the hassle of sharing and viewing of shared group pictures.

Posted via CB10

[BBUniq01]

In terms of group chats, I tend to use SMS cause I have friends using BBM, SMS, WhatsApp, Google etc and I don't want to have to send multiple group texts since everyone is using a different platform. I do agree that BBM has to improve but for the five friends I use WhatsApp with, deleting it has been a non issue. I hope BlackBerry takes the OP's suggestions and move on it.

Zed 10 with 1925 leak

[chrysaurora]

Yep. Regardless of what the cause is for delayed delivery of messages (whether ios/android suspend the app to clear memory or whatever), BlackBerry needs to find a workaround to fix this. WhatsApp was able to overcome it (it took them a lot of time to overcome it, but they did). And BBM needs to do the same. Overcome whatever technical challenge it is that leads to delayed delivery on iOS/Android.

I've no hate for WhatsApp but I'd just love to see BlackBerry succeed. BBM is such an excellent tool and has potential to OWN this mobile messaging segment. And so, it is kind of frustrating to see BBM doing poorly due to such (ridiculously trivial) limitations like lack of "send file" shortcut in Group/Multi-Person chat.

All BB needs to do is this,
-> 1. When a user is in Group Chat Window (or multiperson chat window), the "paperclip icon" should show option to send picture, video, file, glympse etc.

-> 2. Clicking on picture, would allow user to send picture from within the group-chat window / multiperson chat window

-> 3. A clickable thumbnail of picture (or file) should appear in the chat-window
(and in the background, the picture should get uploaded to group media/group album)

-> 4. Clicking on thumbnail should open the picture in the album, and users should be able to comment/like/download the file.

Basically, it's just a 'shortcut' that I am asking for. Ability to upload pictures (although, not videos) already exists. There just needs to be a shortcut in the chat-window itself (groupchat window and multiperson chat window).

This seems like such a trivial thing to implement (compared to complicated features like glympse they have implemented in BBM 2.0 already!)

[adam_h]

Have you ever worked on a software project? Even if these ideas were anywhere near the BBM team's priority list, there's no chance it would be built, tested and deployed in four months. The reality is that the BBM team has a well established priority list dozens of items long that rank higher than group chart picture sharing and emoticon size. Personally I value the BBM voice chart, channels, and multi-device support far more than anything Whatsapp offers.

Posted via CB10

[Jay Hooker]

Making BBM reliable on all platforms should be the #1 priority, otherwise it is dead in the water. Second priority should be to be able to do anything that whattsapp can do.

Posted via CB10

[z10baby]

Reasons why whatsapp sucks...

1) owned by facebook
2) shows everyone when you open the app
3) no interesting or innovative features
4) No delivered or received confirmations
5) No privacy
6) emocitons are terrible

I live in a country where everyone on iphone or android is on bbm 24/7 and haven't heard any of the complaints about reliability..

I truly believe Americans and Europeans are way behind Asia when it comes to messaging. South East Asia, China, Korea and Japan all understood the value and their apps Line, Wechat, KakoTalk are far more advanced that whatsapp.

Posted via CB10