Kobo creates a virtual book club with the BlackBerry Messenger Social Platform

While the BlackBerry PlayBook garnered most of the attention yesterday, as Jason Hiner noted there were actually several platform announcements from RIM. One of these included opening up an SDK for BlackBerry Messenger and one of the first apps I have seen with this integration comes to us in the form of an ebook application. BlackBerry Messenger is a major focus of RIM at the moment with many commercials focusing on it as RIM tries to sell the social aspects of BlackBerry devices.

The folks at Kobo actually had a presence on the stage yesterday and as you can see in the video embedded below they are showing off their concept ereading experience through the BBM Social Platform. It actually looks like a way to use BBM for a virtual book club experience where you can shop with a friend, read with a group, exchange passages, and discuss the book in real-time.

Kobo with BBM from Kobo on Vimeo.

Kobo is one of my personal favorite ebook reader applications and the integration with BBM looks pretty slick. I am sure we will see lots more for the BBM Social Platform moving forward too.