[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) has come a long way since its inception as a pin-to-pin messaging service for BlackBerry smartphones. Today it’s evolved to become a real time engagement tool offering text, voice, and video chat as well as screen sharing capabilities. It connects friends, family, and colleagues across international borders as a true communication and collaboration tool. With millions of active fans of BBM worldwide, continued growing integration from the developer community, and the new opportunities with BlackBerry 10, we’re just getting started.

What is BBM Channels?

Today we’d like to introduce BBM Channels; a new way to connect you to your social network and communities of interest. We see BlackBerry Messenger as a platform with endless opportunities for growth and for connecting individuals and groups to what they’re passionate about. BBM Channels allows you to connect to the communities, personas, and brands that you love – in real time.

Choose which channels you’d like to follow, and as a subscriber you can receive, comment, and share timely updates that allow you to stay on top of your interests and communities. Essentially, BBM Channels gives you the immediacy of an instant communications experience but with access to a much wider community.

You also have the option to create your own channel – a great opportunity for large groups, brands, businesses, non-profit organizations, sports teams, and you to reach fans and followers. Simply setup a channel profile, add in a description and welcome message, upload an image, list contact information, and other optional information. Owners of a BBM Channel are able to manage and share content from both a BlackBerry smartphone and from a web-based administration console. You can customize your channel in a variety of ways, not the least of which is choosing to allow community forums threaded into the newsfeed or enabling one-on-one chat between owners and subscribers.

Connecting on BBM Channels

Once you register for the beta and download BBM 8, you’ll notice a new tab in the interface for BBM Channels. You can join a channel by browsing the carousel or using a keyword search, or through a channel’s PIN number, or QR code. Once subscribed, you’ll be able to see posts, content, and offers from your subscribed channels. You can also comment on posts, hit the Like button, and share interesting updates with friends. Here’s an overview of the new features:

• Create a channel – Create, edit and publish in an instant and there are no limits to the number of followers you can have. Manage your Channel from either a BlackBerry device or from a web management console.
• Discover channels – Check out the BBM Channels carousel to discover new channels. BBM contacts can share Channel invites within a BBM chat, and they also can be added via Channel PIN or QR code.
• View – View profiles for each BBM Channel you choose to follow.
• Subscribe – Subscribe and receive timely and relevant updates, giving you instant access to news, deals and events and choose to receive notifications when new posts are available.
• Participate – Participate and engage in conversations with your favorite communities by “Commenting” and “Liking” posts from channels you subscribe to. Even chat one-on-one directly with certain Channels*.
• Monitor engagement – Easily use built-in measuring tools to assess and monitor follower engagement and interaction

Why BBM Channels?

BBM has over 60 million monthly active subscribers, and on any given day 51 million of those individuals are each using it an average of one and a half hours. This is an incredible level of engagement and represents a significant opportunity for you to get the word out there about your business, community, or cause. We focus on the mobile needs of people, while other social networks are desktop-first. Our BBM customers are sending and receiving billions of messages each day – and over 50% of those messages are read within 25 seconds!

We’re continuing to innovate with BBM and explore new ways that it can be leveraged as a real time network of closely monitored conversation and communication.

What’s new with BBM version 8 for BlackBerry OS 5 through 7 and BlackBerry 10 smartphones?

• Enhanced Navigation – BBM 8 offers tabbed viewing for quick and easy access to contacts, chats, groups, recent updates and BBM Channels.
• Enhanced Profile – BBM 8 allows you the option to share your enhanced profile information with BBM Contacts – such as your birthday, gender and location.
• BBM Channels – Connecting you to your communities of interest.

Join the open beta!

BBM 8 with BBM Channels is currently in open beta for BlackBerry OS 5 through 7 and BlackBerry 10 smartphones; register now by heading over to www.blackberry.com/beta.

How will you use BBM Channels? Share in the comments below and discuss on LinkedIn.

Back in February we asked you how you use your BlackBerry smartphone for business. The results are in and it’s clear that BlackBerry Messenger is a favorite feature for staying connected and keeping in touch with colleagues while on the go.

With BBM for BlackBerry 10, keeping in touch is easier than ever, and now you can video chat and screen share over BlackBerry Messenger. Screen sharing allows you to collaborate with colleagues while away from the office and BBM video allows you to stay connected with friends and family while you’re travelling.

Check out the video below for even more ways to use screen sharing over BBM and video chat:

[YouTube link for mobile viewing]

Do you use video chat and screen share to stay in touch with colleagues? Tell us about your experience in the comments below!

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) is one of the main features that attract customers to BlackBerry® smartphones. Used by over 60 million customers worldwide, it provide instant communications, allows you to break down the barriers of costly international messaging, provides efficiency in the transfer of data, and allows you to keep on top of your work and social life. Today we’re excited to announce that BBM 7.0, with a new feature called BBM Voice, is now available.

BBM now has Voice

With BBM version 7.0, you’ll have the ability to voice chat with your BBM contacts over Wi-Fi®. This is a significant update to the platform and its capabilities, and gives you the choice of text or talk. If you’ve got news that’s too big to share through text chat, simply hit the call button and jump into a call. You can toggle between text and talk, and you can see whether a contact is available for a voice chat.

Additionally, you have the ability to multitask while on a BBM Voice call – browse the web, check email, use other apps on your smartphone, or send BBM notes to another contact. BBM Voice is also compatible with the accessories you have now for your BlackBerry smartphone. Use a headset or Bluetooth® accessory and easily switch between them through the onscreen menu during the chat (you can also talk through the speakerphone on your handset).

BlackBerry ID Integration

In addition to BBM Voice, you’ll be able to synchronize your BBM contacts between smartphones now that BBM is associated with your BlackBerry ID.

Why this is good news for business customers and professionals

I’ve long been a proponent of using BBM for business purposes. A little over a year ago I published a post entitled “How to Use BlackBerry Messenger 6 for Business” – and the opportunities to do so with version 7 are greater than ever.

• More than just text (and now voice), BBM allows you to share calendar invites, voice notes, photos, and attachments up to 6 MB. This is great for sharing files quickly and efficiently with coworkers to increase collaboration.
• International businesses can use BBM as a fully-functional text, voice, and data transfer platform for communicating at a low cost. Companies such as Homex India Private Ltd. have found significant advantages in using BBM to span time zones and locations for speedy collaboration.
• Groups and categories allow you to stay organized and in regular contact with your team in the office, and using BBM often allows you to get directly in touch by cutting through the mass of email that many individuals face. This gives you quick answers and a quick connection – and using BBM Voice as part of this process is icing on the cake.

How will you use BBM 7.0 with BBM Voice for business? Share in the comments below!

In the summer of 2005, Saeed Selvam found his voice as a youth advocate and community organizer. The then-high school student realized that despite widespread media coverage around increasing violence in his native Toronto, few young people were speaking publicly on behalf of the most affected communities.

Selvam became involved in the Toronto Youth Cabinet and was elected as its Director of Youth-Police Relations. At the time, he was able to use his mother’s cell phone to coordinate activities, but following a high-profile incident in Toronto in December 2005, he was thrust into the national media spotlight and flooded with interview requests.

In order to continue at school and fulfill his new responsibilities, Selvam knew that he needed a BlackBerry® smartphone to allow him to efficiently send and receive emails and book meetings through the Calendar functionality. Selvam could respond almost instantly to many of the email enquiries he was receiving every day.

“My BlackBerry smartphone helped me get things done,” said Selvam. “Being in high school, it was the only tool I had at my disposal, and the seamless user experience enabled me to be productive and accomplish everything I needed to.”

Selvam’s BlackBerry smartphone became such an integral part of his social justice initiatives that the University of Toronto’s Massey College agreed to pay for any phone costs he incurred. While attending classes at the University of Toronto, Selvam became even more deeply involved in community outreach. With a laptop, his BlackBerry smartphone, and a small group of dedicated community members, Selvam founded Change12 Inc., a non-profit organization that ran a number of successful projects, including a weekly public speaking seminar that connected young citizens with other local leaders and a television show that aired across the province.

Selvam used his BlackBerry smartphone to coordinate meeting requests with funders, designers, leaders, politicians and other executives and leveraged its social media applications to help spread the organization’s message. He has also benefited from BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) functionality as a quick way to keep in touch with family and friends.

“I think the ability to connect with individuals and socialize with them is unparalleled when it comes to BlackBerry versus the competition,” said Selvam. “And I’ve never had to worry about the call quality or the message reliability.”

Seven years after his first BlackBerry smartphone, Selvam continues to benefit from the added productivity his new BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 smartphone offers, whether from features like the fast web browser and almost instant access to business documents or from its true push-delivery functionality. After being unsatisfied with another smartphone that he had tried briefly, Selvam realized how much he needed the almost immediate email delivery service that he received on his BlackBerry smartphone.

Selvam is now actively working to expand Change12 Inc. and continues to be an active community advocate. Looking back, the young Torontonian knows that much of what he has accomplished could not have been done without his BlackBerry smartphones aiding him along the way.

“My BlackBerry smartphones have enabled me to get things done faster and more efficiently in tough situations” Selvam said. “To me, these are really the pillars of productivity.”

“Communication is the key to our international success, and BlackBerry holds that key for us. It’s a two-way street between sharing and receiving information and our BlackBerry solution helps us achieve goals that we’ve set for ourselves.” — Vikas Sharma, Business Process and IT Head, Homex India Private Ltd

When Vikas Sharma became Business Process and IT Head at Homex India Private Ltd., a subsidiary of Desarrolladora Homex, S.A.B. de C.V, he soon realized the challenges of corresponding with the company’s head office in Mexico, thousands of miles and many time zones away. Inquiries would often go unanswered for hours and it was difficult for Sharma to efficiently support a number of projects.

Sharma’s role has recently expanded to include the company’s new Saudi Arabia office. This move has prompted him to create a reliable communications strategy that effectively connected each office and took advantage of the security provided by the BlackBerry® Enterprise Server. Building upon the company’s existing BlackBerry® smartphone deployment to its senior management and project leaders, Sharma encouraged the employees to better leverage the many features offered on their BlackBerry devices.

Protecting private corporate information was also a key consideration. From an IT administration perspective, Homex effectively managed the BlackBerry deployment through IT policies via the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. This gave Sharma the confidence that company material was securely managed.

The BlackBerry Advantage

“It started with a broader use of the BlackBerry solution,” said Sharma. “Since we have offices spread out across several different time zones, we’re essentially online as a company at all hours, and by educating staff about the reliability and security of the email function on their BlackBerry smartphone, I was able to start working with other BlackBerry features.”

Sharma educated employees about the benefits of working with BBM™ contact information, encouraging them to send him messages whenever they had an inquiry or issue. Working with BBM allowed Sharma the flexibility to manage two offices at once, whether in India or Saudi Arabia, where he travels for 15 days every three months.

“BBM allows me to address any concerns very quickly,” said Sharma. “The fact that I know when the messages have been delivered and read help minimize the geographic barriers in a sense. I don’t have to wait a day, as is the case with email sometimes, to follow up on any outstanding projects and everyone just seems much more organized when we use BBM.”

The company’s improved communications has resulted in much faster and more effective responses to its SLAs, which Sharma calls the backbone of any IT function. Whether rectifying the problem immediately or connecting with the Mexico office to find a solution, Homex now has a solid and robust continuation system for its SLAs.

Homex’s BlackBerry solution has also resulted in an estimated savings in overall communication costs by up to 40 per cent in some cases. Rather than rely on more costly and oftentimes less reliable international mobile services, the company takes full advantage of the BlackBerry smartphone’s data efficiency and Wi-Fi® connectivity to save money, especially during trips to other offices.

“At the end of the day,” Sharma said, “the company’s IT departments are now far more integrated and employees more attentive because of the improved follow-ups on deliverables.

“Communication is the key to our international success, and BlackBerry holds that key for us,” said Sharma. “It’s a two-way street between sharing and receiving information and our BlackBerry solution helps us achieve goals that we’ve set for ourselves. My BlackBerry smartphone is always in my hand.”

Have a success story similar to Homex? Tell us at success@rim.com. Do you use BlackBerry® Messenger for business? How has it provided benefits to your internal and external communication? Share in the comments below.

[Image © Copyright Albert Bridge and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons License)

It’s clear that those who use BlackBerry® smartphones and BlackBerry® PlayBook tablets like to get things done. As RIM CEO Thorsten Heins shared during the BlackBerry World™ 2012 keynote, “BlackBerry is about saving time, and it’s about success.” We’re people who like to think ahead and enjoy feeling prepared – whether it’s with the right information heading into a meeting or, as I’m discussing today, being ready for the unexpected.

Fire departments, regional police, and community programs have long proposed the idea of having an emergency plan for your family and home. In business, we have the concept of business continuity to stay cool and collected in the face of any number of unfortunate incidents. Your BlackBerry smartphone – and a ton of fantastic apps – can help accomplish these goals both at home and at work. Let’s take a look at how you can stay prepared for emergencies.

Connectivity

I once had a member of government speak to me on Twitter® about how he was able to use his BlackBerry device to coordinate emergency efforts during mass flooding. There are countless other examples of this, such as right here in Ontario when the city of Thunder Bay declared a state of emergency – BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) and social networks were used to help coordinate and help those without food, water, or shelter. The connectivity of BlackBerry smartphones helps to keep you in touch with those who matter — not just when you’re having fun, but also when things go sideways and having a connection is critical.

Plans and Checklists

Planning ahead is the real key to being prepared for emergencies. Since you carry your smartphone with you most places that you go, what better place to contain that plan for quick reference? You can work through the many guides and templates to create your own emergency plan and then store it for access via Documents To Go® or Adobe® PDF Reader, or you can leverage the many emergency-focused apps available in the BlackBerry App World™ storefront. For example:

• Federal Emergency Management Agency app
• Business Emergency Checklist
• In Case of Emergency (ICE) Emergency Medical Info and Contacts
• Emergency Information (by AppsForBB.com)
• Emergency Information (by Vimukti Technologies Pvt Ltd)

Business Continuity

Business continuity helps your organization ensure that critical functions can continue in the face of disasters, emergencies, or unexpected shifts due to uncontrollable circumstances. If your organization hasn’t yet considered implementing a plan for this, don’t delay any further. The Business Continuity Institute states in their 2012 Q2 magazine that in a survey of industrial industries, “only 53% of respondents were confident that they could recover quickly in the event of a disaster.” (2012 Acronis Disaster Recovery Index)

Mobility should be a key aspect of this type of planning, as rapid and secure communication is critical to successful execution. If you have a business continuity plan, it shouldn’t be in a binder in the bottom drawer, but accessible from wherever you are. The plan can be stored on your intranet, as local documents on your BlackBerry smartphone or BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, or can even manifest as a custom app deployed by your business.

Many business continuity plans contain emergency contacts that need to be immediately notified of the situation. Consider labeling these in your BlackBerry smartphone’s address book, or even creating a BBM group for mass communication even in the event of your mail server kicking the bucket.

Protect your infrastructure

Lastly, it’s important that your technology, and the investments that you’ve put into it, stays in secure working order. Backing up data off-site is one of many best practices for ensuring the integrity of your digital assets. BlackBerry Technical Support Services can also help if you’re an enterprise using BlackBerry Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions. This can include relationship-based support with regular visits by a technical resource.

I’ve only discussed the tip of the iceberg here in terms of how you can stay prepared for emergencies both at home and at work. What are your ideas? How does your smartphone factor into your plan to face the unexpected?

1. Extending BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) to your BlackBerry PlayBook

The BlackBerry Messenger experience on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet features an enhanced interface and solid functionality. If you’re using your tablet and a BBM message comes into your BlackBerry smartphone, simply pop open the BlackBerry Bridge folder on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and tap “BBM” to read it. I particularly find BBM via BlackBerry Bridge on my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to be useful for viewing photos, voice notes, or files sent to me from BBM contacts.

2. Stay connected without Wi-Fi®

It’s a pretty connected world out there with Wi-Fi at work, home, coffee shops, and airports. When you’re on the move, however, it’s important to stay online without skipping a beat. Thanks to BlackBerry Bridge, my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet comes with me and remains connected the entire time through the wireless radio on my BlackBerry smartphone.

3. Access your smartphone email, calendar, and contacts

With the huge amount of services that we all use (how many email addresses do you have?), unifying access across multiple platforms is paramount. Back-end synchronization of mail, calendar, and contacts is a breeze with BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0, but you also have the option to view your BlackBerry smartphone mail, calendar, and contact information on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet over BlackBerry Bridge on the client side. The perk of this feature is the ability to manage email accounts that you’ve set up on your BlackBerry smartphone on the larger screen and interface of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

4. Remote control using your BlackBerry smartphone

This one is a personal favorite hands down, and never fails to raise some eyebrows in meetings. By activating Remote Control within the BlackBerry Bridge app on your BlackBerry smartphone, you can gain full wireless control of your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet using your smartphone touch screen as a track pad and the keyboard for input. When presenting, you can even use the volume up and down buttons on your BlackBerry smartphone to control “back” and “next” functions on the slides being presented from your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

This feature is extremely useful for navigating through slides when presenting via HDMI. Walk around, pause for effect, and give a rich presentation all from your BlackBerry smartphone and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with no need for a laptop.

5. Share photos and videos

The high resolution of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet screen brings photos and videos to life. If I’ve snapped some pics on my BlackBerry smartphone over the weekend and I want to show a few of them to a friend in the office on Monday, I can easily use BlackBerry Bridge to pull them up on my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Alternatively, gather the family around the TV at home, plug your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in via HDMI output, and showcase your smartphone or tablet photos in this manner. Using the slideshow function to automatically roll through your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet photos makes this an easy one to set up and use for sharing media.

6. Manage files that reside on your BlackBerry smartphone and media card

I often download attachments to the media card on my BlackBerry smartphone and use the file manager to keep everything organized. If I need to review a document or crack open an excel sheet and would benefit from a larger view, I simply use the File Manager on my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to access my smartphone files. With the features of Documents To Go® on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, reviewing, editing, saving, and sending is convenient no matter where I am.

7. Centralize your task list across multiple devices

We all have our habits for staying organized and on top of our responsibilities. The Tasks application on my BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 smartphone is my sweet spot for knowing what I need to get done on any given day or week. With Microsoft® Outlook® synchronization, it provides me with one space that is constantly updated. This consolidation of tasks extends to my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet via the Tasks application in the BlackBerry Bridge folder, enabling my tablet to join the circle of devices that I use to add, edit, and complete tasks. To learn more about synchronizing data on your BlackBerry smartphone, head over to the BlackBerry® Desktop Software website.

8. Open On PlayBook for a rich experience

With BlackBerry Bridge you also have the ability to open links, emails, and files directly onto the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Once you’re connected, you can simply hit the menu key and select “Open on PlayBook” from your BlackBerry smartphone. This is great for utilizing the ultra-fast BlackBerry PlayBook tablet browser or for reading long emails that contain images or other media. Ty’s favorite use of this feature is to snap a picture using his BlackBerry smartphone and then quickly preview it on his BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Choosing which screen to display your content on is a fantastic feature and allows you to fully engage with what you’re working on.

9. Browse your corporate intranet and engage with web apps

If your organization has enabled corporate intranet browsing on your BlackBerry smartphone via a BlackBerry® Enterprise Server connection, this extends to your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet as well via BlackBerry Bridge. Using the BlackBerry Bridge Browser, you can check out the web apps that your company uses, allowing you to enter expenses, check Salesforce data, or engage with workflow approvals on your corporate network from the crisp interface on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. This one saves me a lot of time when traveling and lets me skip the experience of having to wait until I’m back at my desk. (Missing the BlackBerry Bridge Browser icon on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet? Find out why!)

10. Charging your smartphone? That shouldn’t stop you from using it!

Sliding my BlackBerry smartphone into a charging dock doesn’t mean that I have to stop using it. When I leave it to soak up some juice, I just pick up my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and pick up where I left off via BlackBerry Bridge. As long as I stay within Bluetooth® range – which I don’t have a problem with considering the unfortunate size of my apartment – I can continue to interact with my email, contacts, BBM, calendar, and more.

BlackBerry Bridge has been designed to open up a world of possibilities through a Bluetooth connection between your smartphone and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. The information that can be shared, access to files, extension of connectivity, and utilization of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet screen and interface can provide a real boost to productivity and allows freedom of choice to maximize your experience. It’s really a new way for smartphones and tablets to work together.

How do you use BlackBerry Bridge? Share your most frequent use case in the comments below!

For entrepreneurs who start a new business, one of the keys to success is finding the right channel for selling products. For Windy Dana, who designs, manufactures and sells her own jewelry in Indonesia, that channel is BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™).

“In Jakarta, BlackBerry® smartphones are a ‘vital’ communications tool,” said Dana, the founder and owner of the popular blogstore, Antyk Butyk. “When I contact people in Indonesia, they always ask me for my BlackBerry PIN rather than for my phone number or email address. Everyone here uses BBM.”

Dana moved back to Indonesia from Australia, where she got a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s degree in multimedia studies, and she quickly learned that road traffic in Jakarta was so busy and slow that it made selling jewelry in person difficult. So, she started marketing her jewelry through BBM, using the app’s Groups feature.

BBM is an easy-to-use, chat-style app that makes free-flowing conversations between multiple users—up to 30 per group—easy and fast in near real-time. In addition, it allows users to send pictures, broadcast messages and record voice notes, making it easy for Dana to share her designs and products with her BBM Groups within seconds.

“What’s great about BBM Groups is that everyone in the group can see the information in real-time and answer questions, so the group becomes a self-running community where other members help eachother out by answering questions and sharing information, which makes my job much easier.”

For Dana, BBM isn’t just a communications tool – it’s also a valuable business and operational tool. Dana uses her BlackBerry smartphone and BBM as the centerpieces of her business, using them for client and internal communication, marketing, lead generation and even customer service.

“BBM helps me to understand what my customers want, which I can see either by following the group discussions in BBM or by communicating directly with them for customer service.”
BBM is also very cost-effective for Dana’s business, since it uses very little data. She relies almost exclusively on her data plan and makes almost no use of voicemail, which makes her communications bills predictable and keeps them low.

This comes in especially handy when Dana organizes sales events, also known as “bazaars”, to showcase and sell her jewelry. She uses her BlackBerry smartphone to capture high-quality photos and videos and shares them with customers in a matter of seconds, attaching them to invitations to attend her bazaars.

And since BBM allows group members to sync their calendars with each other and send calendar invitations, Dana can keep her group members up to date and remind them of upcoming bazaars.
With the help of BBM and the BBM Group functionality, Dana has grown her Antyk Butyk business, and now employs five employees in total. Her employees help her with the production and delivery of the jewelry but Dana remains the one who sells and markets the products.

“I still design the jewelry myself and my staff helps me to make the quantity that our customers request. Marketing and communication with customers is still handled only by me.”

Dana’s business now is thriving and she is very thankful that BBM provides her with the tools she needs to run her business. She concluded: “Without BBM, I might already be out of business.”

Do you use BBM for business? Share in the comments below.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

With the world’s population continuing to blur the boundaries between business and consumer life through an ever-increasingly connected planet, social networking is now considered a global phenomenon. With analysts forecasting that social networking will be the top communications mechanism by 2015*, Research In Motion® (RIM®) experts at the BlackBerry® Innovation Forum 2011 events are discussing how social networking is making the shift from purely consumer use into the enterprise.

Businesses are adopting and using social networking at a phenomenal rate. As Erik Vermeulen, Keynote Speaker at the BlackBerry Innovation Forum in South Africa, stated:

“At this point, 7/10 SMB’s already believe that Social Media is allowing them to get closer to their customers. When we consider that businesses who use Social Media are twice as likely to see opportunities as their competitors who don’t, it’s best to become an early adopter than being an observer. Dive in, start engaging, and partner with experienced users to develop a strategy.”

Social Networking is rapidly becoming a vital business tool, with companies being able to use the mechanism to add benefits to almost every department of a business – from marketing and customer service to product development and human resources.

Social businesses, no matter what their size, need to communicate, ideally in near real time, across a network of clients, partners, and employees. With the use of mobile in enterprise continuing to increase, companies are looking at ways in which they can integrate social networking on smartphones and tablets within departments to help collaboration, deepen customer relationships, reach decisions quicker, and enable a more effective workforce overall.

The video above discusses how different companies are integrating mobility and in particular are using BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) to connect and collaborate for business use. BBM is a social networking platform with approximately 50 million active users and 5.2 million different BBM groups. Companies are benefiting greatly by using social networking to help boost collaboration and create virtual enterprise communities.

For highlights from our BlackBerry Innovation Forum 2011 in Johannesburg, check out the video. For more information on our BIF11 series in EMEA, follow us @BBEMEABusiness and join the conversation using #BIF11.

How has social networking impacted your business? Share in the comments.

It’s no secret that the BlackBerry® 7 OS has arrived on a whole set of brand new BlackBerry® smartphones. There are many exciting features of the new operating system that enhance the business experience that BlackBerry smartphones have always provided. Here are our top five features of the BlackBerry 7 OS for business users:

Documents To Go® Premium

This app is a true companion to those who do business on the go; it is designed to allow you to open, edit, save, or create new documents including Microsoft® Word, Excel®, and PowerPoint® files on your BlackBerry smartphone. When you need to make one small change to that report, or a colleague is asking for you to review a presentation, you can make changes quickly and efficiently while on the go.

BlackBerry Messenger 6

BlackBerry® Messenger 6 (BBM™ 6) is preloaded on the BlackBerry 7 OS, and it’s stocked with new features that will help you make your business social. Top highlights include integration with many third-party applications, as well as enhanced collaboration that allows the sharing of information such as location, voice notes, large files, and more.

BlackBerry® Balance™ Technology

The BlackBerry 7 operating system will include BlackBerry Balance technology – a feature that is designed to automatically separate the management of work and personal data on your smartphone. Corporate data can be managed and wiped, while personal data is kept separate. Both personal and work uses are protected, all within an easy-to-manage solution for IT managers to work with. To use the BlackBerry Balance technology, you are required to use the BlackBerry® Enterprise Server v5.0.3 or later or the free BlackBerry® Enterprise Server Express (version 5.0.3 or later).

Liquid Graphics™ Technology

Does your office have whiteboards? Great – snap a high-resolution photo of the board after a strategy session rather than furiously trying to take notes. Are you constantly reading documents on the go? No problem. The BlackBerry 7 OS’s Liquid Graphics displays provide a truly brilliant picture, keeping everything that you do crisp, sharp, and easy to read.

Voice-Enabled Universal Search

BlackBerry smartphones using the BlackBerry 7 OS comes with a voice activated universal search feature so you can easily find an email, contact, song, or even a YouTube® video. This feature is especially useful when you’re connected using a Bluetooth® earpiece or headset. You can also use third-party applications to search for a phrase, such as Twitter® or a map search near your location.

These top five features have served to supercharge both my work and my use of a BlackBerry 7 OS smartphone over the past month, and I’m sure that you’ll also find them useful!

What are you most looking forward to with BlackBerry 7?