Exciting day for Beeper! It all started here on HN 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25848278

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.

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.

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.

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...

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

Isn't this the joke from The Office with WOOPH or whatever it was... and an old program called Pidgin?

Nothing innovative here that's crazy

That's an acquisition price of $1,086/user, note that isn't active user!

Amazing price Eric and the team got for an app that doesn't even mention AI!

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

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?

How does Automattic even survive and remain profitable (?) nowadays? What’s the niche?

"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.

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.

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.

I guess it's good to join forces on this. However, I really hope the Texts app on Mac will survive this merge as it is lightyears ahead of the UI insult that Beeper is. I migrated away from Beeper to get rid of the ugly interface and in order to not depend on bridges on some server somewhere (yes, I can host them myself, but who wants to?) anymore.

Automattic sometimes acquires companies and does nothing with them - like with Simplenote. As an early Beeper user, I am disappointed!

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?

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.

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?

>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?

I hope they don't change the pricing after this. I've been using Beeper for a few years now.

Congrats to Beeper, but I think that means I'll end up having to pay $25 or something to keep using it.

How will this differ from https://texts.com/ which is also owned by Automattic?

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?

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.

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!

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.

Might be a bit late to the debate, but is Beeper secure enough to use? I'm apprehensive about installing it.

Their mini tech was built on weird hacks - is all their tech the same or is there something legit powering it?

What's the acquisition amount?

Good for both products, Beeper and Texts, but seems like there will be layoffs coming

Kinda sad. Beeper owns a ton of Matrix bridges. I wonder what will happen now.

Congratulations Eric! Super happy for you and the team!

I trust Automattic implicitly. This seems like a good move.

I just hope they don't kill Beepberry/beepy

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.

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?

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.

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.

Pidgin

Reminds me of why I used https://pidgin.im 20-years ago.

It was an aggregator chat app.

Do you plan on continuing contributing to open source, or is Automattic going to dictate your business plan and Beeper will be enshittified?

Oh noooooooooo. And I have two Beepy.