It's so lonely using Blackberry Messenger for Android

(Credit: Michael Tan)

Hours after installing BBM for Android, my BBM contact list is still empty, mocking me with the thought that I have no friends. So I won't even write about the messaging experience -- that's covered everywhere else. Instead, I'll just share some of the thoughts that came to my mind when I was installing the app.

Username and password management feels like back in the 90s When I started using chat messaging in 1996 with ICQ, then MSN and Skype, there was no way for these chat applications to identify the user as the PC had no unique number. Furthermore, PCs were sometimes shared -- so these applications always asked for a username and password to log into your account. However, phones are true personal computing devices -- they are always near the owner -- and they are uniquely identified by a phone number which follows the owner independent of devices. So why do I still need to be assigned a BBM Pin?

The SIM card's phone number causes a paradigm shift A new generation of chat messaging apps: Whatsapp, Viber, LINE, WeChat, and almost every modern chat app recognizes the unique difference between phone and PC/notebook: phones are permanently logged in to several accounts at once, typically Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and most importantly, being logged in the network via the SIM card. Users have accepted the "log in once, stay logged in forever" paradigm.

Right now, every mainstream chat messaging app uses an SMS to your phone to verify identity without the need for you to enter any passwords, and stays logged in permanently until you uninstall the app from your phone or when you change phones. The typical setup procedure just requires you to install the app, enter your phone number and wait for the verification SMS and then you're good to go. Furthermore, leveraging on the fact that each phone has all your contacts, these new messaging apps will search through the phone contacts and automatically connect you up with all your contacts who actually have the same app installed on their phones.

From then on you can message anyone at all who has the same app installed, and they'll receive your texts.

Using the phone number as your identity is the paradigm shift which all new and hugely successful messaging apps relied on, and the sheer ease of use and speed and convenience of filling up the app contact list automatically have made it easy for users to install multiple chat apps on their phones, since they don't have to painstakingly populate the contact lists from scratch.

Contact lists no longer a barrier for entry for today's chat apps In the past, without automatic contact list population through the mining of the phone contact database, a user could not transfer a database of contacts from one chat messaging application to another, simply because it would have required another round of invites and invite acceptances.

The elimination of contacts as a barrier of entry have shifted the choice of chat app to usability, functionality, reliability and the ubiquity of the app. This is all good, because using contact lists to lock in a user was an artificial lock-in and its elimination is welcome.

For any new entrant into the chat app arena, the following lessons burn true:

It's OK to auto populate chat app contact lists by mining the phone contact database. It's OK to let everybody in your phone contact database know that you've installed a particular chat app. It's OK to log in once and stay logged in forever, if the app doesn't draw too much power in the background. Most importantly and universally, smartphones are logged in first and foremost into the network via SIM card authentication. Chat apps live and die by their ubiquity and unique functionality, usability and strengths.

Sadly, the BBM app doesn't leverage on the paradigm shift of being a chat app on a phone. While it was meant for Blackberry phones, it's still using the PC chat app paradigm and that's exactly what's going to kill it on the Android and IOS platforms.

BBM still uses PIN numbers, passwords and all that old stuff First, BBM actually asks for a password, assigns you a PIN number, and thens asks you for a username email address. There's a lot of unnecessary stuff to ask for.

Worse still, when BBM for Android asked me for a secret question and secret answer in case I forgot my password, I remembered just how a reporter got hacked on iCloud through these secret questions, and I was terrified to type any question and answer in, knowing full well that if the question was too easy someone could actually access my BBM account and if the question was too hard I'd forget it myself.

Suffice to say: relying on a phone's built-in unlock procedure and phone possession as security seems so much more secure than relying on secret questions and answers for password retrieval.

It's also strange to ask for a password on a chat app, because all the other apps have shown that the phone unlock suffices as the only authentication required. No other chat app I can think of asks for passwords except Skype, which is another old school app which we tolerate because it's the easiest app to make cheap calls to real phone numbers. BBM has nothing special to it, just chat.

These times, it's rude to spam friends with invites While all the other chat apps have already established that using the mobile phone number is the best 'username', BBM for Android requires a username, PIN number, and cares nothing about the mobile phone number. Because BBM doesn't auto search through my contacts for other people with BBM, I actually have to send invites out to people and wait for them to acknowledge and approve my invite to chat with them. In short, to talk to somebody, I have to:

Go to the play store and share the BBM app link with my friends, Install BBM, Invite my friends by SMS, email, etc by sending them a PIN which is just a number and not my cellphone number or my name which they would have recognized.

The first invite I sent out, I copied my PIN number and sent it to my friend via Whatsapp. This is what I got in reply:

Yeah, like Skylar, they don't really care.

I wanted to explore BBM, give it a chance, perhaps it'd be faster, more reliable, and pack fancier features while still being more usable than the existing chat apps. However, the signup process is already so difficult, unnecessarily complicated, senseless and antiquated that I've already been put off.

With the proliferation of other chat apps, a convenient and fast way to get all your contacts into the app is mandatory, and BBM fails on all counts in that department. The last thing we want is to have yet another chat app in your phone that saps your battery, and BBM isn't making it easy for adoptees with its old school PC-oriented style.

Worst of all, there's a long queue -- even after you've installed BBM for Android on the phone, and you can't use it until your turn comes. I signed up weeks ago so I got an instant activation, but if you didn't, then you have to wait for a long while unless you cheat by using this method to bypass it.

The most likely scenario would be that millions of people will install BBM on their Android and IOS smartphones, just out of curiosity, but in a short time, the app will be uninstalled or remain unused -- it's just so behind the times that it is quite a disaster.

About the author

With his grandpa building a tapioca processing plant from scratch, and his dad a spook Engineer, even Michael Tan's formal title as General Legal counsel for his company (tech product distributor Convergent) can't overcome his genetic predeposition for tech. Through the years, his mere presence would make tech work--Apple II copy programs would just manage to make the one and only workable copy, QEMM386.SYS would yield that final 3KB needed for Wing Commander and that sticky Fujifilm X100 shutter would affect everyone but him. Leading a technically charmed life, it's no wonder he goes through life with rose tinted glasses when tech is concerned. It just works for him. He is a member of CNET Asia's regional blogger network and is not an employee of CNET Asia.

(Credit: Michael Tan)It's OK to auto populate chat app contact lists by mining the phone contact database. It's OK to let everybody in your phone contact database know that you've installed a particular chat app. It's OK to log in once and stay logged in forever, if the app doesn't draw too much power in the background. Most importantly and universally, smartphones are logged in first and foremost into the network via SIM card authentication. Chat apps live and die by their ubiquity and unique functionality, usability and strengths. Go to the play store and share the BBM app link with my friends, Install BBM, Invite my friends by SMS, email, etc by sending them a PIN which is just a number and not my cellphone number or my name which they would have recognized. About the author

With his grandpa building a tapioca processing plant from scratch, and his dad a spook Engineer, even Michael Tan's formal title as General Legal counsel for his company (tech product distributor Convergent) can't overcome his genetic predeposition for tech. Through the years, his mere presence would make tech work--Apple II copy programs would just manage to make the one and only workable copy, QEMM386.SYS would yield that final 3KB needed for Wing Commander and that sticky Fujifilm X100 shutter would affect everyone but him. Leading a technically charmed life, it's no wonder he goes through life with rose tinted glasses when tech is concerned. It just works for him. He is a member of CNET Asia's regional blogger network and is not an employee of CNET Asia.