Five reasons you should be using BBM

Even if you don’t use BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, you’ve probably aware it’s a very popular way to communicate between BlackBerry users.

It’s a fast, cheap and easy to “instant message” with your friends, family or colleagues – with a chat room-style layout and unlimited characters in which to speak your mind.

Old news, you say? The following are 5 things you might not be aware of with BBMing:

Did they read it?

With BBM, you can get real-time confirmations when messages are delivered and read. A small “D” is seen beside messages that have been successfully delivered to your friend’s smartphone, while a little “R” means the messages has been opened by the recipient. You don’t get this kind of accurate, real-time feedback with text messages and emails.

Picture this

You can choose your own BBM picture to display when you’re writing someone – a custom avatar linked to your PIN (personal identification number), if you will — and you can see your friends’ faces (or another image) when they write you, too. On a related note, you can easily share photos, videos and voice notes with multiple contacts (up to 6MB worth) in BBM, as well.

Hitting the bar

An easy way to share your BlackBerry’s PIN with someone is to start an email or text to them and simply type the word “mypin” and then press the spacebar, and your PIN will appear in your message. If they’re beside you, there’s another fun way to give you PIN. Add (or invite) contacts to chat by taking a picture of their smartphone’s barcode in BBM and your friends can do the same with yours.

Share music n’ location

Using your BlackBerry as a media player? Let your BBM contacts see what you’re listening to on your smartphone by clicking Menu, followed by My Profile on the contact list screen. Now select the “Show What I’m Listening To” check box. Press the Menu key and click Save. You can also let a BBM contact know exactly where you are by using GPS. During a BBM chat, press the Menu key, then click Send Location.

Later ‘gater

You can save your chat history on your BlackBerry smartphone or on a media card. On the Home screen (or in the Instant Messaging folder), click the BlackBerry Messenger icon. On the contact list screen, press the Menu key, followed by Options. Now change the Save Message History field to Device or Media Card. Now click Save and you’re good to go!

Sync readers, have any BBM facts or tricks you’d like to share?