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TORONTO — On a recent visit to New York City, Alec Saunders was looking for a little bit of company.

As he wandered the streets of Manhattan, Research In Motion Ltd.’s vice president of developer relations took out his BlackBerry and tapped out a quick Twitter message, one he had repeated in several American cities on similar trips over the past few months.

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https://twitter.com/#!/asaunders/status/133953562622435329

“NY BB Devs… got any suggetions [sic] for a place to meet up? I’m in the Flatiron district right now, and then back up to central park for hotel”

On the surface, the message itself might seem fairly innocuous; a Canadian executive spending a couple of evenings in the media capital of North America, looking for a few like-minded folks to share a cup of coffee or a few pints.

But Mr. Saunders’ Twitter invitation represents more than just a simple request for a Tweetup. It is emblematic of RIM’s evolving attitude towards application developers, the third party companies building games and other software that run on on RIM’s BlackBerrys, Apple Inc.’s iPhones and Google Inc.’s Android software.