John M. Wargo
Seesmic & BlackBerry
Posted: June 29, 2011 | Categories: BlackBerry
Apparently Seesmic has announced that they're dropping support for BlackBerry users. You can read the announcement here: https://blog.seesmic.com/important-update-for-blackberry-users.html. Seesmic makes social media tools for mobile devices and, back when their solution was in beta, it was a highly anticipated product.
I guess I'm not that surprised they're dropping support for BlackBerry, since BlackBerry and many other device manufacturers have made social media such an integral part of their on-device experience. RIM's support for Facebook, Twitter and so on – very much in your face on BlackBerry Device Software 6 would seem to make it hard for other developers to make compelling aps for the platform.
It's funny though, when you look at Seesmic's web site how very lame the BlackBerry version of their premier application looks against the others (although the iPhone version seems even lamer – that must be the wrong screen shot).
What surprised me, and other people too (from reading reader comments on the Seesmic site), was this comment:
“Effective June 30th, Seesmic will discontinue support for Blackberry in order to focus development efforts on our most popular mobile platforms: Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7.”
Too bad they didn't know how to spell BlackBerry – they must not have been much of a partner to miss how RIM spell's the product's name. Everyone gets iOS right, but doesn't even try to get BlackBerry right. Sigh!
Anyways, back to my surprise. What surprised me was their comment that they're abandoning BlackBerry to focus on their most popular platforms which seem to include Windows Phone. Windows Phone? More popular than BlackBerry? Are they serious? I can see iPhone and Android, but Windows Phone? More popular than BlackBerry? Ugh.
I like Windows Phone. I've enjoyed using the Windows Phone devices and I'm even reading a book on Windows Phone development. But if Seesmic is seeing that Windows Phone is more popular than BlackBerry then the folks in Waterloo (RIM) really do have an issue.
What's happening at RIM and the public outcry targeting the company saddens me. I really, truly can't wait to see what they come up with as a strategy for getting out of this very visible slump they're in.
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