For a lot of folks, BBM and BBM groups have always been a way to aggregate and share news and information from around the world, and with that in mind, BBM has now introduced a new feature in the Discover tab of BBM called BBM News. The service, available to users worldwide brings global and local news and entertainment stories from leading news providers around the world into BBM via the discovery platform Outbrain.

"People around the world are increasingly using their mobiles to read news and share articles," said Matthew Talbot, CEO of Creative Media Works, the company which operates and runs BBM globally. "Along with texting, calling, and email, reading news is one of the most popular things people do on their mobiles. This launch of global and local, curated news brings more of what people want to BBM in a tightly-integrated and compelling news experience."

BBM News is now live in BBM via the Discover tab, so be sure to check it out. Taking a quick run through of it all, you can see the various sources it's pulling from for breaking, world, local, technology, sports, entertainment, business, and more news. Additionally, as one might expect, you can also share any articles within BBM News to any of your BBM contacts quickly and easily.

BBM Launches Global and Local News in Discover

BBM News Brings Personalized News to Users Worldwide

Singapore – 20 April, 2017 – Creative Media Works, operating as BBM, today launches BBM News in Discover. The service, available to users worldwide brings global and local news and entertainment stories from leading news providers around the world into BBM.

A free service for all BBM users; BBM News, available from the BBM Discover menu, provides a personalized experience that "learns" which news stories are important to users—and then tailors what each individual sees in the future. BBM News also makes it easy for users to share stories with their BBM contacts.

BBM News is a great source for news from around the globe, including breaking, world, local, technology, sports, entertainment, business, and more. It brings news to users in dozens of countries worldwide in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East and the Americas.

BBM News leverages the BBM Discover suite of APIs to enable a fully integrated and personalized experience. Working with leading discovery platform Outbrain to power the experience, the news service is developed entirely in-house by BBM and integrated into the BBM Discover experience.

"As the pioneer in discovery, Outbrain is pushing further onto new platforms, beyond the traditional definition of Web publishers," said Matt Crenshaw, Global Head of Distribution at Outbrain. "Being able to bridge the content and messaging worlds is extremely exciting for us, and allows us to drive industry-leading advancements with our technology. Our partnership with BBM gives us the opportunity to provide personalized content recommendations at scale, building on the tremendous user engagement and loyalty that BBM has fostered with tens of millions of loyal and active users."

BBM is one of the largest mobile messaging applications in the world. Since it was created in August 2005, BBM has evolved from a pure messaging application for communication (text and video) to a social ecosystem unifying chat, social, commerce, and services including bill payment, top-up, vouchers/coupons, games, video, shopping, travels, and polls.

"People around the world are increasingly using their mobiles to read news and share articles," said Matthew Talbot, CEO of Creative Media Works, the company which operates and runs BBM globally. "Along with texting, calling, and email, reading news is one of the most popular things people do on their mobiles. This launch of global and local, curated news brings more of what people want to BBM in a tightly-integrated and compelling news experience."

About BBM

On 27 June 2016, Creative Media Works, a division of PT Elang Mahkota Teknologi Tbk. (Emtek, IDX:EMTK) – one of Indonesia's largest media, content and technology businesses – announced a long term strategic alliance with BlackBerry Limited to accelerate consumer BBM's research and development in offering new and exciting features, services and content to the global consumer market. As part of this strategy, BBM is making its APIs available to expedite the growth of partners and consumer services such as:

  • Content – music and video streaming, games, sports, news, celebrity blogs, horoscopes and more
  • Commerce – shopping, gifting and coupons/vouchers
  • Online to Offline Commerce – booking movies, travel, health services, real-estate or job postings
  • Finance – P2P payments, money transfer, mobile phone re-charge, and utilities billing

Creative Media Works now operates under the BBM banner as a stand-alone consumer focused business with teams operating from Waterloo, Mississauga, Ottawa, Singapore, Jakarta, UAE and South Africa. For more information, visit www.bbm.com.

Learn more about BBM New via the BBM Blog{.cta .large}

Thanks, John

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