RIM’s BlackBerry App World has adopted a new content rating system aimed at making the publishing and discovery of apps safer. The ratings have been developed to help parents control the type of content their children access on their mobile devices.

The majority of apps in the App World storefront will be rated ‘General’ (G) while apps that have descriptions including the terms BBM, Facebook, Twitter, chat, dating, social network and message are rated as ‘Teen’ (T).

There will also be the client-side BlackBerry App World 3.1 update on 15 December so users can set a rating filter, meaning only content with specified ratings will be displayed in the app catalogue. Before users customise the filter, the default rating will be ‘Adult’, meaning all content will be visible.

Developers have 15 days in which to update their content rating questions via the vendor portal if they believe the content of their apps require a different rating.