Kobo unveils BBM-enabled eReader for BlackBerry PlayBook

A special social version of Kobo eReader software was revealed today at DevCon during the BlackBerry PlayBook announcement. Kobo for BlackBerry PlayBook is an industry-first social eReading experience, with lots of BBM flavored sharing and communications options.

New features include shopping for books with a friend, reading with a group, exchanging passages and discussing books in real time. These new social features will reinvent the book club with slick BBM connectivity.

There are at present about 2 million titles in the Kobo store, as well as thousands of free classic books available for download.

Kobo for PlayBook will launch early 2011.

Try out Kobo’s current ereader offering for BlackBerry. Download Kobo for BlackBerry free from BlackBerry App World.

Kobo with BBM from Kobo on Vimeo.

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Anonymous

Kobo has one of the worse of the ebook apps on the iPad. It is junky. And, the pricing is sometimes unreliable. Most irritating is that the store is awkward to search. If one looks for a title or author, scores, hundreds or thousands of entries that share a single word or even a close word come up. The Kobo store will literally chase you off to the Kindle Store or iBooks.
http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/vendor/1111 Eric at Ebscer

This is a great demo of the new BBM features. Unfortunately it looks like it will require an update to BBM, and will not be out for awhile yet. This is bad for Kobo as it will probably be enough time to allow Kindle to catch up…
Donny

Nice application use of new API’s but will this allow users to turn OFF BBM updates since its the NOW real-time way to communicate? Can’t enjoy or focus on reading a book on your mobile if the BBM is blowing up your BlackBerry every few seconds. More annoyingly if people are spoiling each chapter.

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