Free Gwabbit for BlackBerry Soon

BlackBerry Users have something to look forward to in the near future.

The buzz is that the Gwabbit contact manager for BlackBerry is expected to be available in the BlackBerry App World – for free – on December 8, Tuesday.  The current Gwabbit for BlackBerry version goes for $9.99 for a 1-year subscription.

Gwabbit (previously Technicopia) came out with Gwabbit the BlackBerry app back in May as the mobile version of the Outlook e-mail add-on.

Gwabbit checks incoming email for signature blocks. If it detects one, it compares the contents to your address books contacts, then prompts you to add or update a contact if there if it finds no previous match or if appears that there has been a change.

Gwabbit’s particularly useful for business users who build their contact lists from their smartphones. It also processes emails quickly and efficiently – provided that the sender’s contact details are conveniently organized in the signature block.

On the downside though, Gwabbit can’t draw possibly important emails from elsewhere in the email.

So how could Gwabbit’s creators make their $9.99-per-year app go for free? By turning users into viral marketers. Whenever a user of the free product adds new contact information, Gwabbit emails the contact to let them know that they’ve been added.

The downside to this is that the contact may view this notification email (spam) as annoyance, which could affect the app’s popularity. But then, if you’re saving $10 a year, it does not really matter, right?

The Gwabbit’s appearance in the Blackberry App World is crucial – coming out before its sometimes-rival Xobni’s forthcoming BlackBerry beta app. The difference between the two apps is that Xobni creates a dynamic, searchable list of anyone who’s ever emailed you, or mentioned in one, but id does not automatically add the record to your contact list; whereas Gwabbit gathers phone numbers, titles, and other identifying details of a contact.

According to Gwabbit CEO, Todd Miller, the app will soon be available for Android smartphones.

Source: CNET

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