Put A Facebook On Your BlackBerry (RIMM, GOOG, MSFT)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 6, 6:13PM EDT · Published Oct 24, 12:00PM EDT

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Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) has launched Facebook® for BlackBerry® Smartphones. This announcement came out of CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment 2007. This will allow BlackBerry software applications that enable fast, streamlined and optimized mobile access to the popular Facebook social utility using a BlackBerry smartphone and BlackBerry system architecture and Facebook Platform for Facebook users.

T-Mobile USA has been selected to be the first carrier to provide the new software application to its customers.

Mike Lazaridis, founder of Research In Motion, will join Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook, to formally unveil and demonstrate the Facebook for BlackBerry Smartphones application today at the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment show in San Francisco. This application will be available for download today.

Facebook users can wirelessly send and view messages, photos, pokes and Wall posts. The rich, native application goes beyond browser-based access, automatically pushing notifications to the user’s BlackBerry smartphone as friends and colleagues send notes, Wall posts or pokes. The application allows users to take a photo, upload it to the site with captions and tags; quickly and easily invite friends; manage events; manage photo albums; and manage their status while on the go.

This does have some business applications depending upon your business, but it may just end up being another time hog. The take from 24/7 Wall St. on this is that the announcement will be a harbinger for many more similar announcements regarding other social networking sites with phone makers and with carriers. This trend has already started as social networking has already started going mobile (MySpace-Helio and others). Free weekly email sign-ups can be accessed here.

Now the question comes down to whether this and other deals make a rumored and long-speculated investment from Google or Microsoft come with a higher price tag.

Jon C. Ogg
October 24, 2007

Jon Ogg is the editor of the 24/7 Wall St. Special Situation Investing Newsletter; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.