Toronto, Canada - Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO of Research in Motion (NSDQ: RIMM), maker and developer of Blackberry devices, outlined his vision for the company as leveraging the convergence of social networking and multimedia in a morning keynote at the Canadian Music Week's digital music & media summit. His vision involves moving beyond facilitating text-messaging and email communication to bringing multimedia content and social networking together on mobile devices. He also challenged the music industry to embrace social networking to reach fans of all genres and sub-genres of music:
"Don't disintermediate yourselves as hit machines", Balsillie said to the room of music industry professionals.

Jim Balsillie started by praising the positive effects of using a Blackberry device to check your email:
"I now look forward to red-lights. The BlackBerry has also liberated people from boring meetings," he said and the audience laughed in recognition.

As for the future of RIM and their Blackberry devices, he identified three major areas of interest for the company:
1. Multi-media content on the phone. Real time over-the-air streaming or downloading and sideload/cache downloading. RIM is planning to be a major player in this space.
"There is not a content player out there we're not talking to," Balsillie said.
2. Social networking sites on mobile. Balsillie claimed that the next big thing after text-messaging and email is the verticalization of social networking in the mobile space.
3. The convergence of social networking and media. This is where Balsillie made his pitch to the music industry professionals in the audience: There is a huge opportunity here for music, record labels to engage in new direct relationships with their fans. So far, according to Balsillie, the music industry has been slow to embrace this opportunity.
"This is very important. You (the user) get your content from your community (in the future)," he said.

He took will.i.am (of Black Eyed Pies fame) and his work with Dipdive as an example of the new web 2.0 merger between multimedia content and social networking. Research In Motion is partnering with the pop artist in the company's latest move to gain more traction in the consumer retail market. Balsille also showed the artist's viral Obama video, as well as a video greeting from Australia where will.i.am currently is, to the audience.
"There is no doubt in my mind that Dipdive is on the cutting edge of this", he said.

Joakim Baage