Ever wished for the power to retract a message after you had mistakenly sent it? Well you will soon be able to do that in BlackBerry Messenger. BlackBerry’s head of product and brand marketing for BBM, Jeff Gadway, has revealed two new features that are currently being tested in limited beta but will soon be available across all platforms BBM is available on. These features include ability to retract messages and get on the ephemeral bandwagon by setting a timer for messages after which they erase themselves.
The ephemeral messaging feature in BBM is similar to what you can already do with apps like Snapchat. BBM will allow users to set a timer to the pictures and messages they share and the recipient will no longer be able to view those messages and pictures after the timer runs out. The problem with this though is that if they take a screenshot when they first view the message, the entire practice of setting a timer proves to be futile.
Message retraction may prove to be useful. It will enable users to retract and remove messages not yet viewed by recipients in the BBM chat. In order to do this just tap and hold on the message and when the menu pops up tap on “retract message.” This feature only works with messages and not with pictures, and does not work in group chats.
Right now both features are in limited beta but BlackBerry promises that they will be available in the BBM version 2.5 that will be released for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry “very, very soon.”