BBM to allow sharing photos in multi-person chat

Adding new features and improvements to BBM, BlackBerry has announced that BBM would soon support photo-sharing in multi-person chats, which comes as another sharing  option to the ones that already exist in multi-person chats, including sending voice notes, location sharing powered by Glympse, and sending files from Dropbox account.

BBM would also soon allow users to send larger files. "While our file size limit on shared files has historically been set at 6MB, we're increasing this to 16MB in the next release of BBM," said the company in a blog post. This would mean, users would soon be able to exchange bigger pictures, larger documents and longer videos on BBM.

For instance, the 6MB transfer limit allowed users to send approximately 6 seconds of 1080p HD video, but with 16MB, users would be able to send 16 seconds of video using the same settings.

The company last month said it would make its messaging service, BBM available to Microsoft's Windows Phone and the upcoming Nokia X platforms in the coming months.

The company had earlier announced the launch of BBM Shop to allow users to buy stickers and other items through the app. Additionally, the company had brought BBM Voice and Channels to Android and iOS.

With these major improvements, BlackBerry compete with WeChat, Kik and Line, that had fast become the choice destination for those looking for an messaging plus experience.

However, it remained to be seen whether BBM could give these apps which had been long entrenched, a run for their money, while BBM still was a relatively new player on Android and iOS.