Could prove controversial for paying customers.
Research In Motion has filed a patent application focused on incorporating advertising links into messages sent by its users.
The application is titled 'System and method for incorporating multimedia content into a message handled by a mobile device', and involves serving ads based on keywords within messages.
"Upon finding matches, corresponding multimedia content is associated with a respective portion of the message content and access to the multimedia content is enabled through selection of a linking mechanism that is visually identifiable with the respective portion of the message."
Of course, this doesn't mean RIM is planning to introduce such a service tomorrow, or at all.
However, any such move could prove controversial, given that BlackBerry customers currently pay a monthly fee for the BlackBerry email service.
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Comments on CrackBerry's story about the patent show people's fears. "i'll be damned if im paying a monthly fee for RIM service AND have to look at ads. this better be for some discounted service," posts one user.
"If this ever happened then see you later RIM and hello to apple again or Android," writes another.
Advertising in messages - whether email, texts or MMS - is a touchy subject, clearly. MVNO Blyk tried the idea in recent years, but made it clear that users were getting free texts and voice minutes in return for getting ads.
