The Jason Salas Experience

Dear Sir(s) or Madam(es):

Good day!  I hope this finds you well.  I represent, in de facto fashion, all software developers, system architects and instant messaging users who have expressed frustration at not being able to federate their IM networks with the BlackBerry Messenger platform.  I can only blindly assume that my humble request today isn't the first time your company has heard a cry for open interoperability, but I hope it reinforces the importance of such a feature in forthcoming versions of your product.

I'm aware of the existing ecosystem of third-party ISV client applications for BlackBerry (e.g., Vayusphere, Beejive, et al.) for connecting to and communicating with remote networks such as AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk, Jabber variants, etc. via the eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP).  This is an easy, albeit costly, solution from a consumer standpoint; however, the fact that such an environment inherently is unable to deliver messages to BlackBerry users without the use of additional external software, coupled with the fact that nearly every major IM vendor is doing so already, is a major weakness from a developer's perspective.

It's impractical to have to operate within such a silo.  At the enterprise level it's costly to have to purchase/maintain scores of licenses for my staffers' BlackBerries, and even more unreasonable for me as a maintainer of a public XMPP-based web updates notification service to force my audience to have to purchase a separate product just to get my free content.  The community can't be held hostage to such vendor lock-in.

I therefore strongly stress the need for enabling future versions of BlackBerry Messenger to support cross-system communications via XMPP.

Thank you for listening to my suggestion and congratulations if such a feature is already in the works.  If my meager understanding of how the communications between disparate systems works is in error, please point it out and I'll gladly do a retraction.  RIM's constant expansion for capabilities, such as having the Clock application natively include Timer and Stopwatch functions in BlackBerry OS v.4.6.0+, previously available as externally-developed freeware, is a noteworthy testament to your consideration of the community's ideas.

I would be more than happy to discuss this matter more with you at your convenience.  Please e-mail me at jason@kuam.com - or better yet, leave me an instant message at my Jabber ID (jas@www.ymesei.com) and I'll get back to you, seeing as how I can't proactively contact you via IM...which is my point entirely.  :-)

**UPDATE** If you feel as strongly, please sign your name/e-mail/JID/URL below and we'll consider this a living petition.  Thanks!