Blaq for BlackBerry Smartphones
I'm taking this to my Posterous because I don't feel like trying to cram this into one tweet or even a few. I also suspect this message will be retweeted at least a time or two, and I respect the timelines of your followers, so let's keep it tidy.
With the official launch of Blaq for PlayBook yesterday, the flood of questions pertaining to the status of Blaq for BlackBerry smartphones naturally began to pour in once again. On behalf of Jerome and myself, I want to apologize for our vague responses, or in many cases, complete lack thereof. To be completely honest, for much of the past 6 months or so, the future of Blaq on the traditional BlackBerry platform was uncertain at best.
There's a lot more to the story of the path Blaq has been on since our initial launch, and I hope to one day be able to better explain it to you. But in short, we obviously have a different developer than before in Jerome Carty of Kisai Labs (formerly BBerryGo), and perhaps more importantly, the 3rd-party Twitter landscape is far different than it even was when we launched less than a year ago.
As many of you know, opportunities are closing, or at the very least, changing quite dramatically for those trying to build special, unique experiences on the Twitter platform. Not only that, but Twitter aside, there are certain platforms that are a bit more "fruitful" than others, to put it as delicately as possible. Add that to the plethora of well-funded companies launching free options for us to compete with, and it's quite the uphill battle.
Long story short (or at least...less long), I recently found myself sitting here mulling over how I might break the news to you all, that while we would support the PlayBook and likely future QNX-powered BlackBerry smartphones, development for current and past BlackBerry smartphones would be ceasing.
I was just about ready.
However, that's not the goal of this message tonight. Nope. Jerome Carty, developer of Blaq (wait, you're not following him? I would, if I were you - @jcarty) has talked me into working with him to finish the big update that has been in the works for what seems like forever, and continuing to support the BlackBerrys you all have now.
Most, if not all, of you probably aren't aware that I actually redesigned the entire app, quite similar the look of the PlayBook version, and that one app is designed to work on all phones, with no more separate touchscreen/non-touchscreen versions.
As far as timeframes go, I can't make any promises tonight. We have several big updates to roll out to PlayBook users to get that right where we want it, and neither of us do this full time, so please understand that we need to eat, too. :)
But please stay tuned to my Twitter feed, Jerome's and of course, the @Blaq account for some finer-tuned details very soon.
We can't say thanks enough to those of you who have stuck with us this whole time and have continued your unwavering support for our project. Sorry I lost sight of that for a moment. We hope to make it all worth your while as soon as possible.
Take care.
~H
