How BlackBerry Messenger set texting free

It’s important to remember that two decades ago, text messages cost 10 cents. Each. Back when we measured our cell phone plans in minutes, and when even 3G connections felt fast, text messages were a huge business for wireless carriers and a huge expense for anyone whose kids learned to T9-type just a little too quickly. Then BlackBerry, nearing the peak of its powers, did something remarkable: it cut the carriers out entirely. Before WhatsApp and Telegram, before iMessage and RCS, there was BlackBerry Messenger. And while we don’t use BBM anymore, we owe it a debt of gratitude. And a few dimes.

In this episode of Version History, our new show about the most important products in tech history, we dig into how BBM happened, and why it ultimately lost the messaging wars. David Pierce, Nilay Patel, and Joanna Stern reminisce about their BBM experiences — including Joanna explaining why she loved and used BBM way longer than it was appropriate to love and use BBM — before going through the app’s full history and legacy.

BBM, you’ll find out in this episode, was right about almost everything. BlackBerry understood the appeal of the “everything app” concept long before it was mainstream, and added practically every feature it could think of to the app. Inside BBM, you could share music, send money, post to social networks, and much more. What ultimately killed the product was, well, lots of things, but particularly lock-in; when people stopped buying BlackBerry devices they stopped using BBM. But there was a forceful internal push to make BBM a global platform, which led to big leadership changes inside the company and one of the messaging industry’s most interesting what-ifs.

This is the second episode of Version History. (The first epispde was about hoverboards!). If you want to find the show there are three good places to go:

Thanks to everyone who has already watched or listened to the show, and has sent feedback! We’re hard at work on the next batch of episodes, and want to hear everything you think we should be doing or not doing or doing differently. In the meantime, though, if you want to dive into BBM as deep as we did, here are some links to get you started: