What is the purpose of the PING command within BB Messenger?

[hotice_]

Like the title says..what's the purpose of the PING command within Blackberry Messenger?

I thought at first that we could use to make it play a distinct sound when your IM friend would "ping" you instead of having it ring on every message sent but it appears that there's no way to do this..(not that I could find anyways)

As soon as I put my blackberry messenger on vibrate in my active profile, everything that comes in, let it be a normal message or a PING command...it vibrates...

Am I not seeing something here?

[moderncowboy]

All ping is is like a poke to get you to pay attention. Like buzz on yahoo or other IMs I don't believe there is any way to make it specific as in tones or what have you.

[penk]

as above.

it's also distinctly useful due to the vibrating alert. if your meassage recipient is using a silent profile, or if the device is in their purse or pocket, a message may go unnoticed. if you PING them, the vibrate is less likely to be missed.

keenly, BBM will show "delivered" (D) and "read" (R), so you can tell if you've sent messages which have been delivered, but not yet been read. also, my wife and i have occasionally experienced a "stall", where several messages sent (usually during an active exchange) will not show checked, or may show several stopwatches as the messages sit in queue. PING-ing the other seems to force its way through, and shoves the undelivered messages on ahead.

(i know that last part wasn't very technical, but it's what we've observed.)

[hotice_]

Have you guys been able to have regular messages vibrate and have the PING issue any audible sound?

I've been unsucessfully able to modify any of my profiles to do this...even after setting a distinct ringtone for BB messenger alerts...

For any of you that have seen or used the bold, you'll know that the vibrate is much weaker then previous phones...