<p>ORLANDO, FLA. When Gary Klassen started working on BlackBerry Messenger in 2005, the team assigned to the project could have fitted into a phone booth.</p><p>There was just himself and another full-time employee at the outset, aided and abetted by two co-op students who joined the group along the way.</p><p>"Not everyone in the company was convinced there was room for an instant messaging platform" in the BlackBerry ecosystem, Klassen said in an interview at the BlackBerry Live conference here. Looking back, that seems crazy as today the free messaging service, better known as BBM, has 60 million users worldwide.</p><p>Despite the initial skepticism, the project gave the team an opportunity to experiment "with what it meant to be mobile first and mobile only," he says.</p><p><a href="http://www.therecord.com/news/business/article/934796--bbm-pioneer-marvels-at-messaging-system-s-success">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/HK4O9NEAoH2Yj2gLFsblxK/IPL-spotfixing-How-Delhi-police-intercepted-messages-on-Wha.html">IPL spotfixing: How Delhi police intercepted messages on WhatsApp, BBM</a> (Livemint)</p><p><a href="http://www.firstpost.com/sports/ipl/sreesanth-arrest-whatsapp-bbm-the-latest-tech-tools-in-match-fixing-787833.html">Sreesanth arrest: WhatsApp, BBM the latest tech tools in Match fixing?</a> (Firstpost)</p><p><a href="http://www.independent.ie/business/world/blackberry-to-launch-bbm-in-new-markets-29270938.html">BlackBerry to launch BBM in new markets</a> (Irish Independent)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=ddEtilM33QqWZDM71Mir0a049toEM&ned=us">5 additional articles.</a></p>