BBM Social Platform – Now in Beta!

At BlackBerry® DEVCON 2010, Research In Motion® (RIM®) announced the BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) Social Platform. Today, the BBM Social Platform officially moves into public beta. BlackBerry platform developers can now start adding social Super App features to their applications, leveraging all the power that the BBM Social Platform has to offer!
With this beta release, developers have the ability to accomplish the following:

• access and update fields in the user’s profile such as status, avatar and personal message;
• create their own custom areas within the user’s profile for promoting recent application activity or storing trophies and achievements;
• initiate and embed chats with friends;
• initiate application-to-application background communication through BBM for sending and receiving application instructions, such as moves in a game or any other application state changes;
• initiate file transfers;
• the ability to share applications virally with friends in their contact list.

Included in this beta of the BBM Social Platform are special simulators for BlackBerry smartphone OS 5.0 and 6.0 that allow for simulation of BBM communication between two instances of the simulator. This gives developers the ability to test the exact workflow and BBM integration that they can expect to see on a live device.
While this current beta is for Java® developers only, BlackBerry® WebWorks™ developers will soon be able to get in on the action as well – stay tuned to the Inside BlackBerry Developer Blog for more details. In the next beta drop – slated for April 2011 – the BBM Social Platform is intended to include full support for the BlackBerry WebWorks platform, ensuring that BlackBerry WebWorks apps have access to all the same APIs and features that Java developers do.
To get started with the BBM Social Platform beta and review all the features supported, be sure to check out the BlackBerry Developer Zone’s BBM Social Platform page – and stay tuned to the BlackBerry Developer’s Blog for more beta updates!

courtesy: http://devblog.blackberry.com.