[HN Gopher] Beeper acquired by Automattic
___________________________________________________________________
Beeper acquired by Automattic
Author : Belphemur
Score : 417 points
Date : 2024-04-09 15:09 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.beeper.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.beeper.com)
| jamesmunns wrote:
| I really like Beeper, and congrats to them for getting acquired,
| but my first reaction is "aw damn how long until the parts I love
| about Beeper get incredible journey'd away".
|
| The new android app is really good, the desktop app has always
| been a step up from other Element apps I've used (it is a distant
| fork, these days), I don't have iMessage, but it works great with
| Matrix and Signal and WhatsApp a ton of other "rarely used" apps
| I have.
| lagniappe wrote:
| >incredible journey'd away
|
| I'm calling Webster's right now.
| Philpax wrote:
| Welcome to our incredible journey:
| https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
| Analemma_ wrote:
| That link is probably more apropos than you intend, since
| Automattic also now owns Tumblr and has been a decent
| steward of it thus far, _not_ shutting it down even though
| it undoubtedly loses lots of money. Instead, they made a
| good-faith effort to make it profitable, before putting it
| in minimal-cost maintenance mode when that didn 't work
| out.
|
| If an "indie service" I loved had to get bought by
| somebody, Automattic would be among my top choices.
| rmccue wrote:
| Automattic _very_ rarely shuts down any products they acquire,
| so I 'd certainly be less concerned with them as the buyer
| compared to another company. (Their failure mode for
| acquisitions tends to be underresourcing them and letting them
| stagnate, not actually shutting them down.)
| COGlory wrote:
| Automattic rescued Pocket Casts from NPR, and made them open
| source. Tumblr from Verizon. In general they're very good
| stewards.
| freedomben wrote:
| Oh wow, thank you for posting this! I did not realize that
| they open sourced Pocket Casts. That is really neat of them.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| FWIW, Automatic has bought a few projects I use (PocketCasts,
| Simplenote) and seem to have been pretty good stewards. For
| Simplenote they actually reduced the monetization (although a
| decade after the acquisition they've started remonetizing in a
| lowkey way which is hopefully sustainable)
| edude03 wrote:
| Kind of surprising, 1- because Automatic is known for wordpress,
| what's the play with messaging? 2- They apparently acquired
| texts.com as well so clearly an area they are interested in.
|
| I also would prefer not to see consolidation but also I imagine
| it's hard to make money on this kind of product so maybe that
| drove the decision to merge?
| basisword wrote:
| Automattic owns a few properties other than Wordpress now. They
| also own Pocketcasts (podcast client), Tumblr, and Day One
| (journalling software).
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I hope they don't change the pricing after this. I've been using
| Beeper for a few years now.
| xenospn wrote:
| I'm not familiar with their business model - what value are you
| getting by paying for a messaging app?
| bluish29 wrote:
| Not having to use multiple messaging apps. Some people would
| pay for this convenience. i.e They support several messaging
| apps so I don't have to tell peopl thag I don't use WhatsApp
| now.
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| > so I don't have to tell peopl thag I don't use WhatsApp
| now
|
| Because you actually are using WhatsApp?
|
| > Some people would pay for this convenience
|
| Some remember when this used to be widespread and free:
| https://www.pidgin.im/
| ixwt wrote:
| Yes, and you can get most of the Matrix bridges that
| Beeper uses and host the service yourself.
|
| Beeper is just a skin over Matrix, and they are hosting
| and managing the bridges for you. So that when any of
| protocols they support breaks because the other company
| changes something (or intentionally breaks things to stop
| connections from clients they don't want), Beeper fixes
| it rather than you having to wait for the open source
| community to do so and you implement that fix. Which who
| knows how long either scenario will take.
|
| Paying for Beeper is not having to manage the self
| hosting, which many are not willing to do. Because as
| with most open source solutions, it's not very simple and
| is intimidating for many. Not to mention having some box
| open to the internet, and having to maintain security
| updates for that box.
|
| I would love for libpurple to come back and make these
| things relatively simple. But the reality is that
| companies have walled off their gardens to control the
| experience, and many other reasons ranging from greed to
| security to spam mitigation.
| jamesmunns wrote:
| Yeah, having all of your messaging in one place is amazing.
| Especially since they support a decent long tail of DM
| services as well.
| xenospn wrote:
| I use iMessage, messenger/IG, WhatsApp, Snapchat and slack.
| Probably not much value for my specific use case.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| What pricing? I've been on Beeper for a few months and i've not
| seen any.
|
| Ironically i joined because of iMessage, which got almost
| immediately ripped from me because Beeper thought it was good
| idea to piss off Apple (... sorry, annoyed). When i joined the
| service was great, but the last couple months (basically since
| the iMessage drama) it has been weirdly unstable. I see a lot
| of encrypted messages (as in, the message doesn't receive
| properly and all the receiver sees is "message encrypted"),
| images failing, gifs failing, generally bad behavior when
| connection is poor, etc.
|
| I was interested when i joined because i thought they were just
| going to offer a service i could pay for, like Kagi. Yet now
| this feels like another enshittification just waiting to
| happen.
| isx726552 wrote:
| > Beeper thought it was good idea to piss off Apple...
|
| Publicity stunt to raise their visibility in hopes of
| acquisition. Today's news shows it worked.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I paid $120 up front. I'm worried they'll switch to a monthly
| subscription after this.
| nicce wrote:
| Since texts.com has subscription and rumor says that they
| are merged, just a matter of time.
| drkleiner wrote:
| > Our teams and products will merge
|
| From the article, not a rumor.
| Belphemur wrote:
| I wonder if the plan is to merge Beeper and Texts.com.
|
| They both look verify similar in their features. Maybe texts.com
| for the Apple Ecosystem and Beeper for the Android one ?
|
| After all, Beeper just released their new version of the app for
| Android.
| bluish29 wrote:
| Beeper is cross platform. They have an app for iOS and Mac.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| OP didn't day Mac. They were presumably referring to Apple's
| main platform, iOS.
| bluish29 wrote:
| I replied before the OP edited the comment substantially.
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| Both of our apps are cross-platform. Both Texts and Beeper
| are available on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Texts for iOS is
| in public beta, you can join the TestFlight:
| https://texts.com/install/ios
| austinkhale wrote:
| Seems that way. From the announcement: "This is a big bet.
| Automattic is doubling down on chat after their acquisition
| last year of Texts.com, a messaging app with a similar mission.
| Our teams and products will merge, and I will take on the role
| leading the team as Head of Messaging. It will take a bit of
| time for us to integrate and combine forces under the Beeper
| brand. We've got big plans!"
| timdorr wrote:
| The bottom line of the post says as such (sorry if it was
| edited in after you posted)
|
| "For Texts.com users... [...] Over time, we will work to
| integrate the teams and products. More news to come in the
| future!"
| joenot443 wrote:
| Does anyone know how the texts.com iMessage integration works?
|
| EDIT - It's macOS only. Nothing new to see here, I'm afraid.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Came to ask the same, is that really true? They have a
| graphic on their homepage that certainly implies you can use
| it as a replacement for iMessage on iOS. I can't imagine
| anyone doing that if you can no longer actually reach anyone
| on iMessage.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _They have a graphic on their homepage that certainly
| implies you can use it as a replacement for iMessage on
| iOS._
|
| You can. You run a "router" on your Mac, which allows
| iMessage interop without the protocol hacking that doomed
| Beeper.
| TechRemarker wrote:
| Yes, it mentioned Texts and Beeper teams will be merging under
| the Beeper brand. So essentially the end of Texts. Presumably
| will bring some parts of Texts app to Beeper that doesn't
| exist, but overall glad I abandoned Texts little while back,
| since while loved the idea, was very buggy with notifications
| delayed, or sometimes unable to send certain types of messages
| through certain services etc. And no pathway at the time for
| support on iOS. With all the EU stuff, there is a chance maybe
| people will be forced to open up more as would love to have a
| single app to manage all messaging but certainly far from
| hopeful that will come to be, at least without downsides.
| drkleiner wrote:
| They will likely dismantle Texts and focus on Beeper as it
| received more investment while taking the good of Texts. They
| will probably introduce Texts monetization model to Beeper
| though.
|
| One app for Apple and another for Android kinda defeats the
| purpose of "all in one platform", wouldn't it?
| jamiequint wrote:
| I hope not, have you used both apps? Texts is much more
| stable and easy to use than Beeper in my experience.
| Grustaf wrote:
| The Beeper codebase is also in a pretty bad state.
| hbn wrote:
| Didn't they just do a ground-up rewrite?
| COGlory wrote:
| What information is this based on?
| qeternity wrote:
| Texts.com runs locally, Beeper runs bridges.
| artdigital wrote:
| Not my experience. I've tried (and am still trying) texts
| and not once I was able to have it just work. Constantly
| messages not showing up, accounts not loading, or something
| else missing. I've been submitting heaps of feedback to the
| Texts team.
|
| It looks great but feels very alpha/beta to me, and I
| decided to not renew my subscription
| dorian-graph wrote:
| Merging the 2 will be interesting since they take opposite
| approaches? Texts doesn't use bridges.
| gmays wrote:
| Yes, from the post:
|
| > Automattic is doubling down on chat after their acquisition
| last year of Texts.com, a messaging app with a similar mission.
| Our teams and products will merge, and I will take on the role
| leading the team as Head of Messaging.
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| Both Texts and Beeper are in active development while we work
| hard behind the scenes to combine the best parts of both under
| the Beeper brand.
|
| So we'll only have Beeper on every platform.
| eugenekolo wrote:
| Smart of Beeper to accept an acquisition/exit as soon as possible
| before their product gets further eroded by non-public APIs
| they're reliant on. Tough to build a business where at any time
| your product can get wiped out by Apple/Meta.
| theamk wrote:
| I would not be surprised if this was their plan from day 1:
|
| (1) Create a product which relies on non-public APIs which can
| be disabled at any time.
|
| (2) Generate lots of press visibility.
|
| (3) Sell itself to some gullible org before the whole thing
| comes crashing down.
| mvkel wrote:
| What makes automattic gullible?
| wokwokwok wrote:
| I mean, maybe the reality is more nuanced but the optics...
|
| > Matt, Automattic's CEO, and I have known each other for
| years. He was an early user, supporter and investor in
| Beeper
|
| It certainly sounds like...
|
| Beeper was in the bin after the beeper mini fiasco, and
| resulting massive brand damage (brand aweness is only good
| if it means people actually want to use your product, not
| active distrust it), so the friend and early investor CEO
| of Automattic saved their failing personal investment by
| bailing them out and letting automattic foot the bill.
|
| Nice having a friend CEO, huh?
|
| I mean, you've got to hope/believe the other folk at
| automattic did their due diligence, but it does _look_ like
| automattic is paying the bills for their CEO to bail out
| their friends.
|
| That would make them gullible and seems pretty shady unless
| they really do have some astonishing reason to expect this
| to pay off... or they got it dirt cheap, in my opinion.
| afavour wrote:
| > Beeper was in the bin after the beeper mini fiasco, and
| resulting massive brand damage
|
| I don't think that's true at all. I'd never heard of
| Beeper before their integration with iMessage and the
| fact that it was disabled by Apple was seen as a negative
| on Apple, not Beeper. They raised their profile, now
| they're cashing out.
| mvkel wrote:
| This isn't how business works.
|
| A "CEO friend" isn't going to give you $125m out of the
| goodness of their heart so some random shareholders can
| save face.
|
| Worst case, the business fails, everyone happily moves
| on.
|
| How do you think automattic is funding this transaction?
| There are underwriters. And underwriters need rigorous dd
| to justify $1,000 let alone $125m.
|
| Even if it's an all-stock deal, a transaction like this
| would need board approval, and a good board needs ...
| rigorous dd.
| housebear wrote:
| This is the same board that approved the Tumblr
| acquisition, presumably. So...a good board...?
| mvkel wrote:
| For pennies on the dollar, and for a very specific
| strategy, which Mullenweg outlined pretty thoroughly.
|
| Did it work? No, but I don't know of any examples of an
| entrepreneur who bats 1000
| markx2 wrote:
| They approved the tumblr deal.
|
| Matt promised targets.
|
| Every target was missed and financially the deal was a
| failure.
|
| The board then stopped any further acquisitions.
|
| I would guess that texts / beeper were cheap and that
| Matt is looking at a very very long time to profit. He
| was once a fan of the 'pizza/team' ratio that
| Bezos/Amazon pushed, so maybe that's where he is looking.
| ksherlock wrote:
| counterpoint: Tesla/Musk/Solar City
| PaulHoule wrote:
| From 2005 to the end Yahoo's role in the SV ecosystem
| seemed to be the people who would buy any company if the
| founder had the right connections, for instance the son
| of a private equity lord who licensed a worthless patent
| from Stanford that Yahoo paid $100+ for.
|
| It is a magical way to turn "anybody" into a successful
| founder or VC if they've got the right connections and in
| fact you can create both ex-nihilo in one transaction.
|
| If you read the newspapers you'd never find out that 70%
| of acquisitions achieve their goals. A lot of that is you
| hear more about the ones that fail and not the ones that
| succeed. The ones that fail give many people the
| impression that there is nothing rational at all about
| how acquisitions happen in corporate America.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| DD?
| tithe wrote:
| Due Diligence
| PedroBatista wrote:
| That's the script but reality is not exactly as the
| script says.
|
| There are a lot friend and family members of so-and-so
| who are "worth" a few million dollars and that money was
| largely a gift. They largely spend a lot of time
| pretending to be "founders", "advisors" and "angels" but
| no, they got lucky.
|
| Not everything is like that, but there's quite a lot of
| that within the billions of someone else's money's ocean
| that flushed SF during the last +20 years.
| mvkel wrote:
| $125 million dollars. To "help" a friend save face?
|
| When a similar acquisition was made a year ago? And it
| perfectly aligns with a their stated thesis that texting
| becomes a CLI in the future?
|
| The more successful an entrepreneur, the more allergic
| they are to spending money
| nikanj wrote:
| My theory is Beeper being a sacrificial lamb so
| Google/Samsung can cry to EU about iMessage. "See they're
| restricting this poor little startup from competing! Pay no
| attention to the funding coming from Samsung, this is
| definitely a poor underdog of a company!"
| Grustaf wrote:
| It wasn't, they genuinely believe in Beeper, and the long
| term plan was rather to become the leading chat app in their
| own right, with users communicating over the Beeper protocol.
| LorenDB wrote:
| A bit of pedanticism here - it's not the Beeper protocol,
| it's the Matrix protocol. Beeper is built on top of Matrix
| (using bridges that you could host on your own server if
| you wanted).
| xinayder wrote:
| Except there are a lot of Beeper-only Matrix spec
| implementations that aren't available for everyone else.
| In other words, no other Matrix homeserver or client can
| benefit from the features Beeper has.
| ClaraForm wrote:
| I'm confused, because it legally sounds like the opposite
| right? All these platforms are legally going to be requested to
| open up sooner or later because of recent EU rulings. Perhaps
| Beeper just ran out of runway? They thought they'd be making
| money in December with their iMessage move, and now it's April?
| eugenekolo wrote:
| That's a bit of my point. At any time your business model can
| get interrupted when you're doing things "that the big
| company isn't, but holds the gate to".
|
| Big company might get more aggressive and make your life
| harder developing. Big company might get less gatekeeper and
| open up the gates so now you have more competition. Big
| company might do it themselves and add interoperability and
| now your product is almost useless.
|
| It's a business model that works to get to some point, and
| then exit as soon as possible, IMO.
| ClaraForm wrote:
| I guess I didn't think about it like that. If everyone
| opens up, Beeper's competition is suddenly WhatsApp,
| instead of being one of their assets.
| basisword wrote:
| If all of these services fully open up there will be 100%
| free and/or open source clients available and Beeper won't be
| able to compete. Before all of these walled gardens we have
| tools like Pidgin and if they open up those will be viable
| again.
| lxgr wrote:
| To be fair, almost all networks that Pidgin could connect
| to (Jabber/XMPP being a notable exception) used proprietary
| protocols, and their operators heavily discouraged third-
| party interoperability.
|
| The difference is that there wasn't any way to do robust
| hardware attestation at the time (which is what Apple does
| to frustrate Beeper-like iMessage interoperability), so the
| reverse engineers usually won.
|
| Here's an interesting story from that time:
| https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-19/essays/chat-wars/
| pkulak wrote:
| The bridges are already free and open source and I don't
| see my friends and family racing to get them running on
| their laptops. Pidgin is great, but something needs to be
| running on a server or you don't get notifications. And
| without notifications, what's the point of a messaging app?
| rw_grim wrote:
| I wrote more on this topic here https://dev.to/grim/why-
| is-there-no-mobile-version-of-pidgin...
| yoavm wrote:
| With all the new regulations coming out of the EU, I think that
| if Beeper stays around long enough they might actually live to
| see the day where these networks have official APIs.
| drkleiner wrote:
| Then Beeper would just be replaced by bigger fish (or open
| source fish)
| yoavm wrote:
| All the bridges used by Beeper are already open source, and
| Beeper itself uses Matrix which is open source too.
| riedel wrote:
| They are running Matrix bridges in the cloud for people that do
| not want to self host. Don't think the iMessage stunt was
| really planned. It was an opportunity to get visibility. Should
| rather thank them: they put regulatory pressure on apple.
| guluarte wrote:
| I agree it must be a engineering nightmare, a whatsapp/imessage
| update and your app is gone.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Honestly given how dim of a view Apple takes of others tearing
| down their artificial walls, having the (legal) backing of a
| large company might be a good thing... assuming they don't shut
| it down of course.
| misnome wrote:
| Beeper does plenty besides PR stunts (which seems to have paid
| off)
| user_7832 wrote:
| You mean the other chat apps, right? Or do they do something
| other than chat as well?
|
| In any case I'm not sure if I'd call their iMessage thing a
| PR stunt (okay, the tweets were likely PR), I'm just happy
| they support as many standards as they can. (I'm also not
| sure if my original comment was seen as wrong or
| controversial judging by the downvote)
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Oh noooooooooo. And I have two Beepy.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Acquisitions go mostly wrong and the buyer usually kills of
| side projects - $200 gone.
| BadHumans wrote:
| If they had to get acquired, Automattic is most likely the best I
| could've hoped for. The backing of a large company might help
| Beeper get more formalized APIs since they depend on hidden APIs
| and hacks to do what they do.
| rchaud wrote:
| Is Automattic big enough to achieve that? You'd think they
| would be making a pretty penny from Wordpress.com and Tumblr,
| but these days you wouldn't pick either one over the
| competition (Wix, Squarespace Threads, IG etc).
| joenot443 wrote:
| I still choose WP over Wix or SquareSpace when given the
| option. Self hosting a bunch of WP sites on a DigitalOcean
| instance and mirroring them all through CloudFlare is
| probably the cheapest way to run high traffic read-only
| sites. Toss in ServerPilot and you can spin up sites about as
| quickly as you could doing the Wix onboarding.
|
| My prediction is that by 2030 Wordpress will be just as
| popular as it is today :)
| rchaud wrote:
| WordPress.com isn't self-hosted, it's the freemium cloud
| version comparable to Wix and Squarespace.
|
| Automattic isn't making any money on the open-source
| version that can be hosted anywhere.
| joenot443 wrote:
| You're right, that distinction's very important. I'd
| never recommend WordPress.com, I'm just a fan of
| Wordpress the OSS.
| qingcharles wrote:
| In the past I would have argued against you, but the WP
| block editor has taken away most of the advantage that
| Wix/SquareSpace had. I've done the same as you now. You can
| buy a $3/mo Hetzner ARM box and run 100 WP sites on it.
| themoonisachees wrote:
| Maybe.
|
| It seems automattic is realizing that there is value in being
| "the established service that does what the giants are doing
| but isn't the giants". Personally and I think the HN crowd
| would agree with me, I see the value proposition in using
| Tumblr, beeper, WordPress over their competitors, simply
| because automattic has amassed a lot of consumer trust in not
| running things into the ground and making interesting things
| out of software that seems like it shouldn't be there.
| mbesto wrote:
| Automattic does like $200~$300M in revenue.
| fuzztester wrote:
| And profits?
| ravetcofx wrote:
| I've been pretty impressed with their Pocket Casts acquisition
| from NPR to date, they open sourced the apps which was a great
| bit of community service.
| philg_jr wrote:
| This is cool. I always knew that Matrix could theoretically
| support anything chat related, but I had no idea that Beeper
| existed and a company was formed around the idea. This is
| actually exciting to me. It sounds stupid, but I can't wait to
| ditch the Apple ecosystem.
| LorenDB wrote:
| Ditching Apple is not stupid at all. There's plenty of options
| that are less hostile overall and provide more choice.
|
| See also: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qcH2wgRLiV8
| diamondfist25 wrote:
| I wonder how texts.com and the matrix apps will work together.
|
| I've dug deep into both products --- texts.com basically is
| browser in browser app that pulls in messages from your logged in
| session, while matrix you have to deploy bridges that pulls
| messages and sync to a db in the cloud, and app then syncs to
| that.
|
| Matrix was a bit pain in the ass to work with, and texts.com was
| more straight forward
| drkleiner wrote:
| Good for both products, Beeper and Texts, but seems like there
| will be layoffs coming
| erohead wrote:
| Exciting day for Beeper! It all started here on HN 3 years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25848278
| gwerbret wrote:
| > Exciting day for Beeper!
|
| Congratulations on your successful exit, but is it actually an
| exciting day for Beeper? Your product has been assimilated into
| something of a behemoth, whose goals (in spite of the text of
| your announcement) aren't necessarily those of a free and open
| internet through open communication protocols. Do you foresee a
| five-year timeline in which anti-monopoly legislation forces an
| opening up of the WhatsApp/iMessage/Messenger walled gardens?
| And if that were to happen, do you foresee Beeper still
| existing as a standalone product? Do you foresee there actually
| being a need for Beeper versus, say, a rejuvenated (and very
| open) Pidgin?
|
| Yeah, neither do I...although I do prefer to be optimistic.
| erohead wrote:
| If you've followed Beeper, you know that roughly 50% of our
| product is already open source (https://github.com/beeper).
| You can run your own Matrix server and use our bridges, or
| self-host the bridges and use Beeper clients
| (https://github.com/beeper/bridge-manager). For all intents
| and purposes, Beeper _is_ the rejuvenated and very open
| Pidgin.
|
| Automattic is a fantastic home for us. We needed a home (or
| new investors) to keep working on Beeper.
| okennedy wrote:
| > Automattic is a fantastic home for us. We needed a home
| (or new investors) to keep working on Beeper.
|
| Is the added investment necessary to scale out specific
| features, or is it to address challenges related to
| profitability?
| nextaccountic wrote:
| > 50% of our product is already open source
|
| What parts are closed source? Are there any plans to open
| them up?
| xinayder wrote:
| Since now you have more resources, do you plan on open
| sourcing your whole solution, or will Beeper still be
| "half" open source? As far as I'm aware you still cannot
| use the Beeper client with your own self-hosted Matrix
| instance, and there's quite a lot of Beeper-only features
| that never became Matrix spec proposals. Is there a plan to
| make these features available to the whole Matrix
| ecosystem? Should I be worried that open source development
| of the mautrix bridges will cease, to focus on a commercial
| product?
| rw_grim wrote:
| FWIW, Pidgin is still very much alive, we even had a
| release in February... Also not sure what "very open
| Pidgin" means as we're 100% GPLv2 but whatever.
| COGlory wrote:
| Congrats on the new position and future of Beeper. I think
| Automattic will be a great home and I've been impressed with
| what they've done with other projects as well.
|
| Are you planning to continue using Matrix to underpin Beeper?
|
| Now I just wish there was convenient way to screen my Beeper
| notifications without having to take my phone out of my pocket
| every time it buzzes...
| erohead wrote:
| > Are you planning to continue using Matrix to underpin
| Beeper?
|
| Yes, all of Beeper is built on top of Matrix.
| spxneo wrote:
| Congratulations! Must be an absolute thrill
| latchkey wrote:
| Here is my Beeper timeline:
|
| March 9, 2021: Paid $120
|
| June 2, 2021: It's your turn to start using Beeper
|
| June 10, 2021: Invite code for upcoming Beeper onboarding
|
| July 2, 2021: totally locked up now
|
| At which point, I had a few more back and forth emails (looks
| like about 27 from 7/2/2021 - 7/16/2021), and finally gave up.
|
| Good for them to get that exit. They put a lot of work into it,
| but it seemed like an impossible problem to solve.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| Sounds like that was a time period where it was vaporware?
| gnicholas wrote:
| Does anyone know how much Beeper raised, or how the economics of
| this exit work out? Just curious how this stacks up for everyone.
|
| UPDATE: _To date, Beeper had raised $16 million in outside
| funding, including an $8 million Series A from Initialized. Other
| investors include YC, Samsung Next, Liquid2Ventures, and angels
| Garry Tan, Kevin Mahaffey, Niv Dror, and the group SV Angel._ [1]
|
| 1: https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/09/wordpress-com-owner-
| automa...
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I wonder what the angle is here. Is Automattic going to help them
| fight a legal battle against Apple's practices with locking down
| their computing devices and platforms? Do _they_ even have the
| resources for that? Or is this just an acquihire and abandonment
| of that whole messaging thing?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| > Is Automattic going to help them fight a legal battle against
| Apple's practices
|
| I'm no MBA, but it might be better business strategy to pile up
| a million dollars and light it on fire
| regularjack wrote:
| Beeper is a unified messaging app that supports multiple
| services, the iMessage thing was a separate app called Beeper
| Mini.
|
| I think Beeper will continue to be useful to people, regardless
| of whether it supports iMessage or not. Obviously, supporting
| iMessage would be a big plus, but from what I gather, many
| people use it for other services.
| kayson wrote:
| Bummer that you have to use and link Google messages for sms now.
| With the old app, it used the local sms database, though
| performance was never as good as other sms apps for some reason.
| nikolay wrote:
| Automattic sometimes acquires companies and does nothing with
| them - like with Simplenote. As an early Beeper user, I am
| disappointed!
| glenstein wrote:
| For me that is a positive, not a negative. They have kept it
| alive, have not messed it up, and have not upset the apple cart
| with wild changes resulting in loss of compatibility with past
| versions. There can be cases where it's a negative but I think
| Automattic has been a near-perfect steward of Simplenote. I
| suppose my only concern as ever is how they keep it alive at
| their expense without freemium'ing and paywalling it to death.
| I assume they are just footing the bill for its continued
| operation right now.
| smcnally wrote:
| Agreed re stewardship & hope for long-term viability.
| Operation + updates ~3x / year for the iOS, macos and Linux
| clients I use daily and also for Android and Windows.
| Freemium and paywalling hasn't infringed on utility yet and
| they've kept the source code available and GPLv2
|
| https://github.com/Automattic/simplenote-electron
| luuurker wrote:
| Many companies don't know when to stop and end up killing their
| products by introducing bloat which almost no one wants and
| costs money to develop/maintain. Simplenote works, is
| maintained, and does what it says on the name... more should be
| like them.
|
| If all they do is keep Beeper running reliably and add new
| services as needed, then I'd say that's a good thing for most
| users.
| markx2 wrote:
| "Matt, Automattic's CEO, and I have known each other for years.
| He was an early user, supporter and investor in Beeper. "
|
| Beeper were not important enough to be listed: https://audrey.co/
|
| "Our privacy policy and terms of service remain the same, though
| they may change in the future."
|
| Reminder: wordpress.com shares data with 851 other companies.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| How does Automattic make money? Do they get paid to look the
| other way when people's Wordpress blogs get spammed by SEO
| links?
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| WooCommerce is one.
| trickjarrett wrote:
| They provide hosting for Wordpress blogs, and a number of
| their backend tools have premium versions, such as backups,
| etc.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| They run a proprietary SaaS called jetpack that injects a lot
| of tracking into otherwise self hosted wordpress blogs.
| Contortion wrote:
| Plus your messages will no longer be fully E2E encrypted. As
| per their FAQ (emphasis mine):
|
| "For example, if you send a message from Beeper to a friend on
| WhatsApp, the message is encrypted on your Beeper client, sent
| to the bridge, which _decrypts and re-encrypts the message_
| with WhatsApp 's proprietary encryption protocol."
|
| Directly underneath that they also say:
|
| "Using native end-to-end encrypted chat apps independently may
| be more secure than connecting to them to Beeper"
|
| https://www.beeper.com/faq#how-does-beeper-connect-to-encryp...
| COGlory wrote:
| What do you mean "no longer"? Beeper has always behaved like
| this.
| Contortion wrote:
| No longer as in for a new user that currently uses
| individual apps.
| lolinder wrote:
| In context your use of "no longer" is very confusing.
| This thread is talking about what might change in Beeper
| as a service, if you want to interject with information
| about how the service currently works there are other
| phrases that would have made that clearer.
| Contortion wrote:
| You are correct. I was adding what I considered extra
| privacy-relevant information in response to GPs statement
| about WordPress sharing data with other companies, but
| the fact that I'd not heard of Beeper before
| unintentionally influenced my word choice.
| mintplant wrote:
| You can host the bridges yourself:
|
| https://github.com/beeper/bridge-manager
| snowfield wrote:
| Still won't be E2E as per their FAQ
| tylerritchie wrote:
| that FAQ is accurate but (rightly) doesn't cover high-
| security deployments.
|
| if I'm running the bridges local-to-the-client (I am, on
| my McBook) it's not meaningfully any less e2ee.
| encryption happens in the matrix client (running on the
| laptop), the encrypted message is sent to the homeserver
| on localhost, the bridge (on localhost) grabs the
| encrypted message and decrypts it, then the bridge re-
| encrypts it and sends it to Whatsapp (or wherever). the
| content of the message is as secure over the wire with
| this approach as using first-party apps directly
|
| if one hosts their own bridges they're person-in-the-
| middling themselves and should take all the necessary
| precautions. if they're using beeper's hosted options
| they have to delegate read/write ability to beeper
| (though I think the signal and imessage bridges might be
| device-local), and beeper is clear about that.
| agile-gift0262 wrote:
| But at least you are in control of the computer where the
| decryption and re-encryption is happening.
|
| They usually call it E2B (end to bridge)
| ein0p wrote:
| How does Automattic even survive and remain profitable (?)
| nowadays? What's the niche?
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Pretty sure plenty of small commercial websites still host on
| wordpress.com. That and selling their user data to OpenAI.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| A big chunk of news media online use wordpress instead of a
| custom CMS. So it's kind of the square space / wix / ghost for
| news media. I imagine Wordpress offers managed website
| instances for these companies.
| rmccue wrote:
| Automattic is primarily four core businesses:
|
| 1. WordPress.com - Hosted SaaS for building websites. Very
| cheap to run, includes ads on free sites, and they sell users
| upgrades like custom domains or removing ads from their sites.
|
| 2. Jetpack - Services for self-hosted WordPress sites, like
| backups, social media integration, image CDN, antispam - mostly
| paid services, again very cheap to run.
|
| 3. WooCommerce - Open source ecommerce service. They sell add-
| ons like payment gateways, and have their own with a percentage
| fee of each transaction.
|
| 4. WPVIP - Enterprise and high-scale hosting service. Expensive
| ($25k/yr+) but worth it for large companies who run their
| business off it, like newsrooms and marketing sites.
|
| To my knowledge, they're each independently profitable.
| Automattic also has a lot of additional smaller services which
| support these, and various Other Bets.
|
| (I don't work at Automattic, but have many friends there.)
| krallja wrote:
| I am on an old Premium plan for the Day One journaling app.
| It was recently acquired by Automattic. Happy to keep paying,
| but concerned that Apple recently Sherlocked it.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Kinda sad. Beeper owns a ton of Matrix bridges. I wonder what
| will happen now.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Sounds like they're planning to still run the Beeper service,
| perhaps merged with Texts. I'd bet they'll still use Matrix, it
| seems to be the very core of how Beeper works.
| luuurker wrote:
| Matt/Automattic is good at keeping things open source. On top
| of the work on WordPress and their plug-ins, when they acquired
| PocketCasts, they made the apps open source:
| https://blog.pocketcasts.com/2022/10/19/pocket-casts-mobile-...
| fareesh wrote:
| Their mini tech was built on weird hacks - is all their tech the
| same or is there something legit powering it?
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Well if you consider private APIs/impersonating 1st party
| clients weird hacks then yes, none of these services have
| official 3rd party client support.
| gtirloni wrote:
| I was thinking about this after seeing the announcement.
|
| It's fine for open integrations like Matrix/IRC but all other
| are with proprietary services provided by for-profit
| companies.. that usually doesn't go well in the long run
| (e.g. Twitter clients).
|
| It seems to be a really high risk investment. I wonder how
| they plan to pull this off if/when they start to grow and
| attract more attention.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I find it interesting that so many people want to unify all their
| messages. For me, I like having different apps that I can check
| with different frequency. I am glad that I can get my iMessages
| immediately but that LinkedIn messages don't get delivered to me
| until I open the app/website. I have literally never had an issue
| where I didn't get a message in time because it was sent via the
| wrong platform. People who need to reach me urgently know how to
| do so.
| 0xblinq wrote:
| And what prevents these aggregator apps from having different
| settings for each network?
| gnicholas wrote:
| I imagine this is possible, but as someone who has tuned
| these settings in the OS-level notification preferences, why
| would I want to do it all over again within an aggregator
| app?
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| I agree. I even like to silence notifications on different
| messaging apps depending on my focus mode on iOS/macOS.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| iOS/Messages is almost here. You can mute certain
| conversations, and set certain contacts as MVPs. But it has a
| few gaps w.r.t. focus modes.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| You can't receive messages via iMessage without disclosing
| your phone-number or Apple ID e-mail address to the sender.
| Furthermore, doing anything that changes your phone-number
| (e.g. using a local SIM abroad instead of roaming)
| invalidates your phone-number with iMessage, but because
| most people use iMessage via phone-numbers it means you're
| forced to use roaming ($$$) when travelling, and so on and
| so on.
|
| So long as iMessage is sold as "better SMS" then that's
| fine, as it inherits SMS's limitations (above) - but it
| isn't a portable, platform-agnostic, geography-neutral,
| messaging platform, and I'd rather people didn't try to use
| it as such.
| kibwen wrote:
| That's a perfectly valid workflow, but it would certainly be
| nice for people who do want a unified workflow to be able to
| have that option.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Such an app/service would not work towards the interests of
| message recipients - but the message senders. Those interests
| are not aligned.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Why are they not aligned?
|
| If I send someone a text and they receive it in their email
| inbox because that's their preference, what difference does
| it make to me as the sender?
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| When you send an SMS text message, there's a
| understanding (and therefore, an expectation) that it
| goes directly to the recipient's phone/smartwatch and
| that they can reply immediately; i.e.: it's a system for
| high-priority (and therefore highly-intrusive)
| communications - this is why people generally don't give-
| out their mobile-phone number to strangers.
|
| Unless you go to the effort to tell people that you route
| your SMS messages to e-mail and therefore reply in-your-
| own-time (hours/days/weeks delay), the people trying to
| contact you aren't going to expect that: they're going to
| expect you to reply much sooner. I'd be out of a job if
| my boss' panicked SMS messages about how our prod website
| is down went to email instead of my phone.
|
| -------------
|
| Any kind of "universal" messaging platform that anyone
| can use to send anyone a message needs to allow
| recipients to set how maximially intrusive those messages
| are - but senders might also want a way to set how
| minimally intrusive those messages are. Those
| requirements cannot be easily reconciled in a way that
| protects privacy and prevents abuse while also allowing
| anonymous and unsolicited messages or senders. So far the
| "best" way to do that today is by segregating senders
| (not recipients) by system (e.g. private SMS for high-
| intrusive; less-private-but-guarded e-mail for low-
| intrusive; public social-media, etc).
|
| Consider services that tried to work-around that, such as
| LinkedIn's paid messaging feature - which didn't exactly
| go very well.
| gnicholas wrote:
| For sure. I just wonder who these people are and how large
| the market is, since none of my friends/family are in it.
| It's possible this is much more popular on Android, or
| outside the US (perhaps because they use WhatsApp more than
| iPhone-using Americans). But if this is the case, I wonder
| how much they will be able to charge, since Android users are
| less monetizable than iPhone users, and the US has a good
| chunk of the highly-monetizable mobile audience.
|
| For me, my unified workflow is my phone, which I have tuned
| to receive notifications from various platforms in various
| different ways (push, pull, manual). Even if I could tune
| Beeper to do the same, I would prefer not to have to
| duplicate my effort in setting preferences, which I've
| already set at the OS level.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| I like having apps I can check with different frequencies. What
| I _don 't_ like is when I have two apps that I have to check
| regularly. Thankfully, almost everyone I talk to regularly uses
| Signal, but there's those few stragglers who stubbornly cling
| to SMS.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The problem arise when your friends can text you on Discord,
| WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Viber, Facebook Messenger,
| Linkedin, Instagram, Twitter, Bsky, Mastodon, Skype, Slack,
| Email.
|
| It's not that you don't receive messages but that you need to
| keep installed 14 different applications on your phone or get
| used to 14 different UIs to do the same thing.
|
| The major problem is the WhatsApp vs Telegram split for me, if
| all my friends were on Telegram I wouldn't really need it.
|
| Self hosted Matrix sounds like a good solution and I'm happy
| with managing my own server - but the UI quality (Elements) is
| just not on par with Telegram, so I'm still there.
|
| I agree with you, it's nice to relegate spam to Linkedin /
| Email, but that can be achieved with marking contacts as
| friends vs random people and having a unified messaging
| platform.
| brandon272 wrote:
| Yes, this is exactly it. And in an age where people are
| terminally on their phones, having 14 different apps that can
| all launch notifications from the background as long as they
| are installed and you are logged in is perhaps fine. On a Mac
| or PC in particular it would be nice to have other options
| around aggregating these messages in a single interface as we
| used to be able to do 20 years ago.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Yeah, I can understand the appeal a bit more on a computer.
| On my phone, it's a problem that's already been solved at
| the OS level.
| languagehacker wrote:
| I've said this before, but Automattic's catalogue of products
| reads like an elephant graveyard of past internet fads.
|
| I view an acquisition like this as a relative death knell, but
| only insofar as we have seen unified messaging attempted time and
| again only to fail due to combinations of social pressures and
| anticompetitive technical choices. Beeper will be absorbed into
| another also-ran messaging platform that won't be able to compete
| with whatever communities already have critical mass.
|
| However, as far as exits go, it sort of seems like the best
| possible outcome for the folks at Beeper, so congrats.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _elephant graveyard of past internet fads._
|
| This makes it sound like they acquired Evernote, which perhaps
| wouldn't have been the worst thing ever.
| rwbt wrote:
| That's unfair to Automattic I think. I think they're really
| good to maintaining the products with less relative harm. Yes,
| I know the recent change in terms to feed their data to AI (you
| can pay them to avoid it).
|
| I'm still hoping they can revamp Tumblr but atleast they keep
| the lights on.
| gmays wrote:
| Congrats! Matt and the team at Automattic are a good group of
| folks. It seems like a great fit, and I'm excited to see what you
| guys do together.
| boomskats wrote:
| The hopeless romantic in me is hoping the real reason Automattic
| acquired them was actually to get some useful developer
| documentation written for the Beepy.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Given how bad the WordPress documentation is, it's a weird hope
| to have from that company.
| freedomben wrote:
| Interesting, I think the WordPress docs are pretty decent.
| There's always room for improvement, but I love how it links
| and shows you the source code. They could definitely expand
| documentation coverage for plugins and stuff though, that's a
| little lacking.
| alberth wrote:
| Pidgin
|
| Reminds me of why I used https://pidgin.im 20-years ago.
|
| It was an aggregator chat app.
| rw_grim wrote:
| We're still here and still supporting tons of stuff...
| https://pidgin.im/plugins/?publisher=all&query=&type=Protoco...
| duxup wrote:
| >If you haven't heard of Beeper before, welcome! We make a
| universal chat app - one app to send and receive messages on 14
| different chat networks.
|
| I feel a little exhausted just thinking about needing to be on 14
| different chat networks.
|
| What are people using that for?
|
| Marketing / customer service type chat stuff across networks?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| yes and sales and regular users too
|
| linkedin, fb, ig, slacks, google stuff and so on - it adds up
| quickly
| garbageman wrote:
| Not a user but I imagine it's like the blackberry model where
| texts, messenger, whatsapp, and whatever else all go to the
| same inbox rather than having to check 40 different apps. I
| really wish that idea would come back.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I wish that idea came back with some sort of iron hard
| contract protecting user data in perpetuity.
| saynay wrote:
| I would imagine most people are not using all 14, but some
| subset. If you have friends and family that are not all on the
| same services, having a unified inbox to talk to them all
| without having to remember who you talk to on what is
| convenient.
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| Rarely a single user would use 14 different chat networks. For
| example for me, I have two WhatsApp accounts (number for my
| current country + home country), Twitter, Instagram to chat
| with old friends, Facebook for some relatives, LinkedIn for
| networking, Signal to chat with my lawyer, Telegram for hobby
| communities.
|
| I simply wouldn't talk to a lot of people in my life if I had
| to use a different app for each.
|
| We also aim to be the best chat app, period. So even if you are
| using only a single account on a single network, we want to
| supercharge your chat experience with AI, snippets, good
| search, labels, advanced notification options, and much more.
| leros wrote:
| It's exhausting having different apps.
|
| I use SMS for talking to friends in the US. I use WhatsApp for
| talking to most international people. I use Telegram to talk to
| Australians. I use Line to talk to some people in Asia.
| croes wrote:
| I think it's about connecting people on 14 different chat
| networks not a single user on 14 networks?
| Grustaf wrote:
| > I feel a little exhausted just thinking about needing to be
| on 14 different chat networks.
|
| That's the point, the vision is that you should only have to be
| on Beeper.
| Spivak wrote:
| And you don't have to convince everyone in your life to
| switch to The Messenger. You can just have it.
| kevstev wrote:
| This idea has existed and been implemented for a very long
| time- Pidgin was the first client I can remember that would try
| to bridge across various chat networks. You likely are on 14
| different chat "networks" already- you might not think of them
| as chat networks, but as apps with chat functionality.
|
| Just real quick off the top of my head I can name a bunch: FB
| Instagram Twitter WhatsApp Telegram Signal Gchat/whatever
| google calls the chat in gmail these days kik sms Irc Discord
|
| This is just a matter of keeping all those separate apps, or
| consolidating them into one single one. Back in the early 2000s
| when I did indeed have friends across AIM, Yahoo, MSN, etc... I
| did use an all in one app to consolidate everything.
| theogravity wrote:
| Trillian was my first client. It looks like it still exists
| and now runs on a subscription model:
|
| https://trillian.im/
|
| Also looks like it no longer connects to multiple networks,
| but uses their own now.
| dqv wrote:
| You can still add XMPP accounts, but that's all.
| kevstev wrote:
| Ha thanks for jogging my memory. I knew pidgin wasn't the
| first or even the primary one I used but I couldn't recall
| what else I had used.
| joelhaasnoot wrote:
| I just hope they don't kill Beepberry/beepy
| starik36 wrote:
| I am using Beeper desktop app on Windows for the express purpose
| of being an iMessage client.
|
| Their press release (https://blog.beeper.com/2024/04/09/beeper-
| is-now-available/) says "Beeper does not currently support
| iMessage". Does that refer to the Android client?
|
| I hope they continue to support iMessage on the desktop.
| alalani1 wrote:
| Automattic basically consolidated the messaging aggregator market
| for $175M - I don't have any data but given they had 40 FTE
| between the two companies, I would guess not more than $10M in
| revenue across the two. Anyone understand the business rationale
| for wanting to own this market?
| xmprt wrote:
| No matter what, as long as we continue to communicate with each
| other, messaging will never die. Individual messaging platforms
| will come and go but the idea of instant messaging has existed
| for about as long as the internet. $175M might be a steal if
| Beeper gets more mass market appeal.
| alalani1 wrote:
| Yeah, my first response was going to be that the paid
| messaging app business model hasn't worked that entire time.
| But what we've learned from Whatsapp is that there may be
| other ways to monetize (Whatsapp Business). Still not an
| obvious bet IMO but you're right that owning the messaging
| layer is valuable.
| k8svet wrote:
| The Verge reports:
|
| > Since then, Beeper has rolled out some security upgrades that
| change the way the app handles security and prevent Beeper itself
| from seeing unencrypted messages from Signal, WhatsApp, and other
| encrypted apps. Screenshots of Beeper's desktop and mobile apps.
|
| How?
| btseytlin wrote:
| Probably on device encryption before anything is sent through
| their servers
| k8svet wrote:
| I'm sorry, but that's not an answer. WhatsApp encrypts the
| message E2E, and then Beeper is bridging it into Matrix. The
| only way this would make any sense is if they've bridged E2E
| all the way through to ... the clients? Like, it doesn't make
| any sense.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| It's a journalist's take, they probably mean that Bleeper
| doesn't phone home the messages from the client.
| k8svet wrote:
| Well, now I regret that this comment sounds a bit
| dismissive, if another reply is true and they run the
| bridge locally. That's... impressive, and still surprising
| to think about.
|
| I'd honestly be fine with accepting the compromise of
| hosted bridges, especially since they seem to offer the
| ability to self-host the bridges, while using Beepers'
| Matrix infra. Gives them some extra cred in my book.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| There's an "experimental" option in the app to run the server
| locally. I don't use signal so not sure if it works as well
| xinayder wrote:
| They break the terms of service of said services, they started
| this with iMessages last year and Apple shut them down after it
| was an obvious break of ToS, and they keep doing the same with
| other IM services.
| kevincox wrote:
| Beeper has been talking about running on-device bridges rather
| than server-side bridges. So presumably that would allow
| encryption to the user's device, then re-encrypted on-device to
| Matrix then sent to Beeper.
| k8svet wrote:
| Wow, that's ... surprising.
| xinayder wrote:
| Do you plan on continuing contributing to open source, or is
| Automattic going to dictate your business plan and Beeper will be
| enshittified?
| jtbayly wrote:
| "We plan to be enshittified," said nobody, ever.
| xinayder wrote:
| That's a pessimistic take to say that Automattic will close
| up Beeper and make it a worse a product.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I think it's more of a criticism of asking the question as
| if that was ever going to be given as an answer, regardless
| of what the actual answer is.
|
| in what scenario do you see anyone giving the negative
| answer truthfully?
| wpietri wrote:
| I think the flavor of the answer says a lot. A vague
| negative answer will make me suspicious, as will one
| based in good intentions and moonbeams. But a negative
| answer rooted in principle and mentioning specific
| choices is one I'll take more seriously.
|
| Enshittification is the default path for leaders with MBA
| brain, but some still manage to avoid it.
| compootr wrote:
| that's a naive take to think there's no chance they will
|
| every. company. wants. money.
|
| it's the SAME, EVERY.SINGLE.TIME
| askonomm wrote:
| That's indeed what a purpose of companies are.
| Organizations that do not want money are registered as
| non-profit.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Laxative manufacturer?
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39981276.
| Andrex wrote:
| I trust Automattic implicitly. This seems like a good move.
| markx2 wrote:
| Oh, you really should not.
|
| - Never trust ANY money-making company IMPLICILTY.
|
| - Go to https://apple.wordpress.com
|
| See the cookie banner
|
| Click View Partners in the bottom left
|
| Browse that list, check the details
|
| Find the company that Matt has sold your data to for over 11
| years.
|
| The data Matt sells is for every user and every visitor not
| just on wordpress.com (who clicks Agree, but we know most
| people do)
|
| Are you still happy?
| max_ wrote:
| What's the acquisition amount?
| thoughtpeddler wrote:
| How much of this is a long-term bet that the US DOJ's antitrust
| case against Apple (at least the iMessage-specific argument) will
| result in the forced opening up of the platform, such that Beeper
| (now Automattic) will sustainably function?
| freedomben wrote:
| I'm sure that's a non-zero factor. Plus Beeper has a lot of
| name recognition due to their epic standoff
| xinayder wrote:
| Is it really anti-trust if you reverse engineered something
| (deliberately breaking the ToS of said service - Apple can
| suspend your accounts for doing so) while said service ToS, a
| contract you sign when you use their service, explicitly
| forbids reverse engineering?
| freedomben wrote:
| and they're rewriting Beeper in PHP as a WordPress plugin!
|
| Kidding of course, but on a serious note what's the strategic
| value of Beeper here to Automattic?
|
| From the post:
|
| > _Automattic is doubling down on chat after their acquisition
| last year of Texts.com, a messaging app with a similar mission.
| Our teams and products will merge, and I will take on the role
| leading the team as Head of Messaging. It will take a bit of time
| for us to integrate and combine forces under the Beeper brand.
| We've got big plans! I'm really excited about the future of chat_
|
| Why? Are they trying to eliminate a competitor (standard big tech
| co move)? Do they think texts.com doesn't have a bright future?
| I'm not trying to be negative (in fact I have a high opinion of
| Automattic due to their great open source work), just trying to
| figure out why this makes sense for them.
|
| Is chat a diversification effort for Automattic, or does it tie
| into their overall strategy somehow?
| flexagoon wrote:
| Automattic also acquired Pocket Casts, so they don't only own
| things that fit into the WP ecosystem.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I don't see the win for Automattic here. Beeper seems to be a
| dead product with its main use case gutted.
|
| Are there other capabilities that I'm missing?
|
| Either way, congrats to the team!
| throwaway6e8f wrote:
| This is an odd match, and at a time when the strategic value of
| Beeper seems to be very low.
|
| > Matt, Automattic's CEO, and I have known each other for years
|
| Could it perhaps be a favor for a friend to give a plausible
| reason for ejecting from the business without admitting failure?
| gkoberger wrote:
| Sure, but Automattic also bought Texts.com... this seems to be
| part of a bigger strategy on their part.
|
| Even friends don't spend $150M on friends for no reason.
| Automattic is doing well, but they don't have $150M to drop
| (plus future salaries, hosting, etc) just to help someone save
| face.
| andrewstetsenko wrote:
| At some point, it makes sense to join forces for Beeper and
| texts.com to create a unified messaging app. The idea was
| realized a number of times, but I hope we'll see the best it's
| iteration now.
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