Canada Journal – News of the World Articles and videos to bring you the biggest Canadian news stories from across the country every day
Facebook has decided to cease all support for BlackBerry smartphones, which includes BlackBerry 10 and BBOS platforms. They have decided to discontinue its essential APIs for BB, which will affect the working of the existing Facebook and WhatsApp apps on all BlackBerry devices. BlackBerry has replaced the official BB Facebook App with a native app that uses a simple web interface.
This news hasn’t gone down well at camp BlackBerry, which has put out a blog post to whine about it and reaffirm its commitment to BB10.
“We are extremely disappointed in their decision as we know so many users love these apps,” BlackBerry said.
“We fought back to work with WhatsApp and Facebook to change their minds, but at this time, their decision stands (but let them know how you feel on social media, using the hashtag #ILoveBB10Apps). Despite this, we have worked hard to ensure our end users have the best experience in light of this decision, and are continuing to search for alternate solutions.”
BlackBerry users have also fought back against WhatsApp, which said its decision to can its BlackBerry apps is because the software doesn’t “offer the kind of capabilities we need to expand our app’s features in the future,” via an online petition, which is currently closing in on 2,000 signatures.
The petition reads: “WhatsApp decided to stop supporting BlackBerry 10 at the end of this year. This is non sense [sic] a lot of people still use the platform daily. I hope WhatsApp/Facebook sees [sic] this. At least give us the service with no updates. Please share this with your friends! WhatsApp will hear us [and] care about us.”
BlackBerry isn’t done there, and continues to pledge its commitment to its developer community.
“Our commitment to BlackBerry 10 and to developers has not changed – we know our developer community continues to be one of the strongest proponents of BlackBerry 10 and they are creating thousands of apps every month,” the firm said.
Agencies/Canadajournal
It’s good that someone is starting this….. it’s time to move on. Platform war ended. Clearly there are two winners.
It is annoying and costly to support all the possible platforms.
Who cares, 2 of the worst apps going. Facebook is for narcissistic losers with no lives and whatsapp doesn’t do anything the regular sms doesn’t do. People who use these apps are just mindless followers and need to wake up. In fact it blackberry was to be OK with this and even support it then I would probably even consider buying one again. A phone without Facebook is a phone with class!
Oh no, no facebook app for my blackberry any more. Woe is me.
Oh, wait, I don’t have a facebook login. I wouldn’t touch facebook with a ten foot bargepole. Phew!