Granted, it's a small part but when speaking of Twitters early days Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey credits the use of his then RIM 850 as a tool that helped spark status updates across the World.
We'd like to pretend we are surprised at this news but really -- we're not. People tend to forget that RIM was one of the first companies to make use of mobile data. The RIM 850 provided e-mail and WAP services, with limited HTML all across what was then basically a 1G network, called Mobitex. The inter@active pager was in the hands of approximately 400,000 users in 1997 then blew up to 51 million users by 2002."I had a RIM pager, the 850, the first email device. I programed a system where I could fire off an email from that and set my status from anywhere. And it worked! And I was able to also at a regular interval pull my buddy list and get those updates sent to my email address. It was awesome! But the number of people who had those mobile devices was so minimal that the timing was just not right. This was 2001."
Source: Gizmodo
Reader comments
RIM played a part in the making of Twitter
And ten years later twitter is now a social networking phenom. Congrats RIM on the assist
good
That's pretty cool to know. Jack just dunked that
You know what I would probably still use that 850 in addition to my current, but only for twitter. Something about that size i would find a use for.
RIM and Twitter should totally team up to make a Twitter Device. LOL it would be small and compact like the 850 but you can only use it to tweet.. :)
...and SMS.
Well it would have to have a simplified version of BBM as well. Or it would be a RIM product. :)
Then they should play a part in making a twitter app for my play book; juss sayin.
They're trying.. more so then you know...and more so then I can fully comment on.
well at least thats encouraging....
Very much so!
orly? nice :)
umm that phone looks sexy. is it for sale by chance?
i'm pretty sure you could not make phone calls with it back then :)
Yeah... Where can I get one of those RIM 850s' Bla1ze? Lol!
eBay, surprisngly has a few.
Technology is amazing
Gosh just look at that keyboard, it's still better than half the keyboard you can find on devices today, touch or not!
and that is why I will never trade my BlackBerry for any device on this lovely planet!
BlackBerry is the BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SO? Al Gore invented the internet...top THAT
I remember when I was at U of waterloo, a friend had an even older device. It looked like a pager with a screen taped to it :) hehe. I remember thinking "wow that is so cool, you can send email to each other with that??"
I remember him saying "ya, we've got a newer version coming out soon"
A nice story, but wrong on the details. In 1997, the 850 had not yet been released. It came out *after* the 950, which was released in August 1998. As well, the 8xx series ran on the DataTAC network, while the 9xx models ran on Mobitex.
The model that was available in 1997 was the RIM 900, aka "the clamshell".
http://www.berryreview.com/2009/02/12/the-history-of-rim-the-blackberry-...
From someone who worked at RIM at the time,
B.
Horrible
What is this nonsense? The device didn't exist at that time and the story doesn't make any sense yet all these BB fanboys start screaming about how great the golden days of RIM were... more than 10 years ago. If only they were as relevant today...
Just to be clear, the 850 *did* exist in 2001, which is what the original Gizmodo article was asserting. The details added by CB are somewhat incorrect, though.
Nice lil Rim history lesson
Hmmm. I still have one. Loved that keyboard. Was the Jeep Wrangler of mobile devices. Any chance there are any service providers still activating the 850s ???