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39 Comments

CrackBerry Asks: How do you discover new people to chat with on BBM?

By Kevin Michaluk on 28 Aug 2012 05:09 pm
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 I need some BBM friends!

The majority of the world's 78+ million BlackBerry subscribers use BlackBerry Messenger daily. Many of those keep their BBM list to the minimum, only adding people they personally know. Many others take a more social approach to BBM, actively seeking out new people to add to their contact lists and connect with.

Within CrackBerry's forums, our Social Users & PIN/Barcode Sharing forum is always bustling with activity. Browsing through through the topic threads, you'll find just about every category and interest imaginable is covered. It's a great way to discover new BBM contacts. It has been for years and will be for many more years to come. But it's not the only option.

Over the years we've seen a lot of different BBM PIN exchange type of services come and go. In fact, CrackBerry pretty much took the lead here too. Long time readers of the site will remember when we introduced the BlackBerry Pin Exchange as a Facebook application back in 2008. It grew pretty fast for a while, but after our developer fell off the grid and Facebook kept changing things up, we let that one fizzle out.

Since then, we've seen many other options get added to the mix for discovering BBM contacts. In App World you can find a number of apps dedicated to BBM contact discovery, including Pin Share, Search 4 BBM, Jingu Friends, Pinbook and more. Off device, you can search around the web and find some different PIN-sharing sites. And on Facebook you can find some apps too. There's a lot of options, which brings us to my...

Question of the Week: How do you primarily discover new contacts for BBM? Do you shun that practice and just stick to people you know? Or do you proactively try to discover new peeps? If so, how?! Are you in the forums? Using an app? Which app? Sound off in the comments and let us know!

Topics: BBM CrackBerry Polls

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Kevin Michaluk Kevin Michaluk 3681 (articles) 3021 (forum posts)
39 comments

shemaree09

Since all of my friends have iPhones and Android I hardly ever use BBM. My contacts consists of strangers from BBM Music. Its really weird to have strangers on BBM. There are usually no active conversations going. My BBM is stale.

Dave79

Why would anyone want to bbm chat with strangers? How about getting a life instead?

The only stranger I'd add would be a bunch of horny girls ready to drop their panties and that dont live more than 30 mins away.

Camfella

Only 30 mins.? You're more lazy than you are horny!

Dave79

Maybe you dont get laid enough if you'd bother yourself travelling longer than that :D

adamschuetze

I don't know anybody (in person) with a BlackBerry anymore. A gaming buddy of mine in Nova Scotia has BBM, so we've been on each others list for a few years, but other than that, all my contacts have come through forums, twitter contacts, and through BBM groups I've discovered over the years.

Kat0908

I have one BBM contact left :( and I don't even talk to that person lol. Actually when he does contact me, its always through text so I never get to use BBM anymore.

johuntbb

I only have one contact left, but that's my girlfriend.... so my BBM is still quite busy :)

gymwarner

I prefer to know who I'm adding, unfortunatley there are some 'odd' characters out there. I prefer to know that when I receive a BBM alert its from a trusted source.

Perhaps if I wasn't married then I might add randoms, but even then its risky.

OniPod

If you give out your PIN to any contact from Asia or the Middle East, you'll never have to look for another way to gather contacts ever again. Once they have you on their list, they will forward all their contacts to everyone on their list. I had about 10-15 requests a day. I had to start cherry picking my contacts.

Another way is through BBM groups. I haven't posted my PIN on any forums in years.

Kevin Michaluk

True.. BBM Groups and BBM Music both send a lot of contact invites...

benholtzman

yeah but search4bbm is not about adding strangers you can find to who of your facebook friends has bbm

ga.rhythm

But I only know 3 people who have BBs.

ShipyStyle

I have a shirt with my BBM barcode on it. Pretty much the best $25 I ever spent. Anytime I go out or to a club and I wear that shirt, ladies go crazy scanning me, in more than one way of you guys know what I mean ;-)

8100-->8830-->9670-->9930=PlayBook

Chaoosu

Can i see your shirt?

ronitmor

search4bbm is my favorite application from all the applications you gave.
the shirt idea is realy great .
lately i sow that search4bbm came out with wonderful and unique game application for facebook.

thisiscjay

clubs/bars --> girls ---> bbm ---> pins

KyonCoraeL

Agreed, start at the bar, continue with bbm. meet some good people.

stevepar

Its a Tool not a toy :-)

dboy54

Only add friends and people I know. I did add a few bbm music invites but they turned out to be childish and horrible spammers. My list is gettting short though, down to about half a dozen active users with only a couple of those being daily or at least weekly activity

Baraksurfing

I really like what the Search4BBM App has to to offer. You can search for friends you know and find out if they are using BBM without having to scan or ask for their barcode, You can chose to add people that are close to you and you can also categorize your search by gender/age/category. For me and I believe other people out there, this is the last piece in the puzzle for BBM. Happy BBMing!

tayshun12

I'm still trying to add Crackberry Kev

bigjman

The rare times I've added people besides people I know personally, it's been through BBM music, twitter, or wikitude.

juacas

I have more than 50 contacts and I know them all personally.

kdeckels

It's funny I see this, because I just added my first BBM contact today - a friend by the way.

gradyutama

we have to add someone based on our friendship.do not let everybody to add ur blackberry messenger without ur acknowledgement....they can be a spy or people who wants to abuse urself.even,we will never know that right?especially for people who are using foursquare and make it integrated with the blackberry messenger.just for u know that,more than 50 people will see on our profile and think about our behaviour everyday whenever we go.can we imagine if everybody talk about us and how about somebody have bad plan for us...
please think before add someone that u do not know.thank you

falconee

Why the fucka I want to chat with strangers, how about geting a life or spending some times with friends or chat with my girlfriend...the only strange person that I want to chat with is a girl who tells me that she's ready to take her clothes off on the webcam... done !!!

veeru789

I normally don't add strangers but once in a while do check Wikitude for any BBM contacts around me.

CDM76

I add most the people I frequently text to BBM. Makes things easier. :)

TTune

BlackBerry is for people that DO. BBM is a vehicle for that.
People that DO don't troll for time wasting Chatty Cathy dolls via BBM.

If you want that kind of spammy time wasting traffic just post your PIN anywhere in public.

m2k_mz

With about 44contacts of which 99.9% are people i know, i really dont have time to look for strangers. Besides when that sound goes off or BBM alert shows, its Action time. And i cant get into Action just to discover its spam. Waste of my energy :-)

ZeyadHesham

I had 121 contact, not even a single stranger ;)
Sadly my BB fell in the pool and I went with GS3

CeeXTwo

I have no issue at all adding strangers to my BBM. I like to chat, doesn't matter who you are, as long as you're decent.
I've been chatting online with strangers since I started using a computer actually. And yes I have a life as well, but I also have that. I don't see how adding strangers to your BBM equates with having no life...

jdesignz

thru broadcast messages.. like a chain message. LOL

mawil1013

BBM has always been a bust for me, nobody I know owns a BB, so BBM is a pure waste of space. If it was opened up to iPhone, Android and MS then it would certainly grow in usage,

PS' don't want your snarky comments...

Xopher

I used to chat with several people via BBM. I was in a BBM Group for BlackBerry developers, and another group that came from the MyBlackBerry site. Not too many of those people are still on BB, so I don't chat as much as I used to.

I'm in the camp of not chatting with people I don't know, just to chat. I do like finding people with similar interests and carrying that conversation over into BBM (and other chat platforms). That has introduced me to quite a few people who I now call friends.

decypher44

What would be interesting is if everyone that posted here ended their post with the name of the country they are living in.

I have two BBM contacts - a husband and wife who are friends of mine. Everyone else I know has iOS or Android.

USA

Rootbrian

Wikitude, don't know why crackberry didn't mention that at all.

Jerry22535

I have no problem at all adding strangers to my BBM. I like to chat, doesn't matter who you are, as long as you're decent and know how to hold a convo.most of who I know don't have bb anymore and I don't want my BBM to go to waste so I ramdomly add strangers from facebook and twitter and sometimes from bb pin trains.

Buckeye girl

The only purpose for the bbm chat is for divorced and desperate women looking to steal other women's husbands.