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A comment on BBM for Android and iPhone Update.

Re:BBM for Android and iPhone Update by aaronbrethorst on Saturday September 21, 2013 @10:05PM (#6425488) 

    ...more than 1.1 million active users in the
    first 8 hours without even launching the
    official Android app – is incredible.

    Consequently, this unreleased version caused
    issues, which we have attempted to address
    throughout the day.
"[C]onsequently" is an odd word to use here.

1.1 million unexpected users overwhelmed the BBM service? I would've expected BBM, given its enterprise-ready status, to be more than capable of handling that kind of extra load.

So, what's the real story? Is it that BBM simply isn't capable of handling bursty load?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:BBM for Android and iPhone Update by ovoxo on Saturday September 21, 2013 @10:10PM (#6425500)
Not sure why you think there's more to the story. It's extremely common for "unreleased" versions of various apps/services to have bottlenecks that the production-ready versions would not. That's typically why they're "unreleased".
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:BBM for Android and iPhone Update by macspoofing on Saturday September 21, 2013 @10:23PM (#6425542)
Maybe because Blackberry just halted a worldwide rollout of their Android AND iPhone BBM product without saying why?

If this isn't a service-overload issue, I'm having a hard time imagining what kind of problems this unreleased Android version could have caused.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:BBM for Android and iPhone Update by ovoxo on Saturday September 21, 2013 @10:42PM (#6425578)
They themselves said "..this unreleased version caused issues". That could be referring to anything - including service-overload issues but I don't know why that would be that surprising.

This is exactly why companies like to have tight control of the roll-out of new products. They want to find these types of bottle-necks and glitches in rather controlled environments.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:BBM for Android and iPhone Update by untog on Sunday September 22, 2013 @06:26AM (#6426382)
worldwide rollout

But there was no such rollout. An unreleased version leaked.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:BBM for Android and iPhone Update by hrasyid on Saturday September 21, 2013 @10:58PM (#6425623)
My guess is that these 1.1. million active users found a problem in the service that the beta tester could not. Probably related to its integration with Android / iPhone.

If anything BB should be thankful to the leaker. It would be a lot worse if the issue was found when it's used by millions of legitimate user

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:BBM for Android and iPhone Update by sudomal on Sunday September 22, 2013 @05:42AM (#6426316)
If 1.1 million users are so desperate to sign up without you actually launching, then there's potentially a heck of a lot more waiting for a proper launch. Their business will be used to dealing with one user = one phone, so the growth of the service will be predictable. Now they have to deal with a virtually unlimited number of users while also supporting actual customers.
[ Parent | on HN ]