This is how a mobile brand dies…

Mike Butcher, writing on TechCrunch UK:

Over the weekend parts of London descended into chaos as riots and looting spread after a protest organised around the yet unexplained shooting of a man by Police. Of course, there was huge amounts of chatter on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, with the latter coming under enormous amounts of criticism from the UK press for fuelling the fire. But while Twitter has largely been the venue of spectators to violence and is a handy public venue for journalists to observe, it would appear the non-public BlackBerry BBM messaging network has been the method of choice for organising it.

I think we can safely say the business brand value cachet of owning a BlackBerry is done.

From business essential, to tool of rioters to irrelevance…

UPDATE: Some think this is good news for BlackBerry and RIM