BlackBerry is rolling out a number of new features for BBM that give you greater control over the content and messages you share with friends. In addition to Snapchat-inspired self-destructing messages, the release also brings the ability to retract messages you wish you hadn’t sent.

If you thought everyone on the Internet could read the messages and view the pictures you sent to your closest friends, you’d probably share a lot less. No one wants their private conversations and compromising photos to fall into the wrong hands, so we do what we can to avoid that from happening.

That’s why services like Snapchat have become so popular. You can share what you like with whoever you like, but still have some control over what happens to your content after you’ve sent it. Many messaging platforms have been mimicking Snapchat’s model in recent months, and BBM is the latest.

Two of the most most interesting features to Android, iOS, and BlackBerry today are Timed Messages and Message Retraction. The first lets you specify how long a contact has access to your IMs and images once they’ve been received, so you can be sure that if their handset gets lost or stolen, your messages won’t be on it.

With Message Retraction, you can retract or delete a message you’ve sent during a BBM chat. So if you happen to hit up the wrong person, or you immediately regret something you said after hitting the send button, you can just erase it.

In addition, the new update makes adding stickers to your BBM chats even faster, and allows you to send and download high quality pictures you share and receive. There’s also a new Discover Music feature that lets you see what music your contacts are listening to in BBM Feeds.

This release is rolling out now to all BBM users, but BlackBerry says it may take “24 hours or more” to appear in your app store depending on your region and operating system.

• SourceBlackBerry