If you own a BlackBerry, part of the appeal is RIM's BlackBerry Messenger feature.  An exclusive IM service of sorts, it allows BlackBerry users to stay connected in a more real-time manner versus text messaging.  It's quite popular among BlackBerry users - according to RIM, 28 million users work with BlackBerry Messenger on a regular basis.

Today at DEVCON 2010, Research In Motion announced BlackBerry Messenger Social Platform, a tool for developers to integrate BlackBerry Messenger with their applications.    Through this new tool, there's quite a few possibilities on the horizon; developers can leverage BlackBerry Messenger in their applications to do things like transfer media and invite users to game play.  Through RIM's BBM Social Platform, developers can integrate the following: 

• Contact list – allows users to choose from their BBM contacts from within another application in order to initiate social interactions such as chatting or initiating game play
• BBM user profile – an application can insert application status updates into the user's BBM profile allowing it to be launched or downloaded from BBM by the user’s friends
• Application-specific communities – users can create BBM friend groups specific to an application
• Data Transfer – allows users to transfer pictures, audio, video and other content directly from an application to their BBM contacts or groups
• Invitations – allows users to invite new friends to BBM, invite their friends to interact within or download an application, and accept invitations, all from within an application

The BBM Social Platform will be coming to market in the spring of 2011, and additional information can be found at http://devblog.blackberry.com.