The way that we communicate has drastically changed in recent years, which has led to more than a few fallen messenger heroes. The most famous of which was arguably MSN Messenger - a quintessential part of life in the early to mid-noughties.
Now, the latest fallen soldier from the era is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Blackberry Messenger.
If you cast your mind back, say, a decade, you'll remember that back then, Blackberries were the height of cool. They were the ultimate business phone thanks to their QWERTY keyboards. But due to technological developments elsewhere (I'm looking at you, Apple!), Blackberries quickly fell out of popularity.
In fact, back in 2016, the company announced that it was going to stop making new phones altogether.
This was also the year when a company named Emtek took over control of Blackberry Messenger, and last month, they announced on their blog that the service would be stopping forever on May 31st.
That's today in case you haven't quite woken up yet.
The post read:
"Three years ago, we set out to reinvigorate BBM consumer service, one of the most loved instant messaging applications, as a cross-platform service where users can not only chat and share life experiences but also consume content and use payment services.
"We poured our hearts into making this a reality, and we are proud of what we have built to date.
"The technology industry, however, is very fluid, and in spite of our substantial efforts, users have moved on to other platforms, while new users proved difficult to sign on."
It continued:
"Though we are sad to say goodbye, the time has come to sunset the BBM consumer service, and for us to move on.
"We are grateful for your support and wish to thank everyone, especially our users, partners, and employees, for being part of the BBM consumer service journey.
We hope you will cherish many fond memories of BBM consumer service that helped shape messenger platforms to become what they are today."
And despite the fact that the majority of people have moved onto other platforms like WhatsApp, there were some, albeit not very many, who begged the tech company to keep BBM around a little longer...
The majority of social media users, however, simply took their hats off to BBM.
Goodnight sweet prince, may you rest in peace.
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