• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, November 21, 2008

One-week after launching dedicated MySpace social networking application on its smart phones, BlackBerry this morning announced that it has shattered downloading records for the devices. Since the application launched Nov. 13th, there have been more than 400,000 downloads, marking an all-time high for both BlackBerry developer Research In Motion (RIM) and MySpace in terms of first-week application downloads.

Via the new application, BlackBerry users collectively sent and/or received more than 15 million messages and updated their "mood and status" more than 2 million times during the first week of use.

The launch is the latest in a series of applications-based content and marketing deployments that are transforming the mobile landscape and are helping to transform smart phones and personal communications devices into the next big palette for marketers, content developers and media networks alike. The mobile applications race, which was triggered by the rollout of Apple's 3G iPhone, its increasingly popular App Store, and a variety of open source developers, is accelerating as other smart phone developers step up the game (see related story about the BlackBerry Storm in today's Online Media Daily).

"This record shows just how much of a force in the mobile consumer space RIM and MySpace have become," Chris DeWolfe, co-founder and CEO of MySpace, boasted in this morning's announcement.