Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Beeper acquired by Automattic

blog.beeper.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 310 posts

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#111

Post by mckn1ght »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #105
gnicholas wrote: post #100

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 nee…

I agree. I even like to silence notifications on different messaging apps depending on my focus mode on iOS/macOS.

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.

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#112

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

kibwen wrote: post #108
gnicholas wrote: post #100

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 nee…

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.

Such an app/service would not work towards the interests of message recipients - but the message senders. Those interests are not aligned.

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#113

Post by rwbt »

languagehacker wrote: post #106

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…

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.

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#114

Post by mtlynch »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #112
kibwen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Such an app/service would not work towards the interests of message recipients - but the message senders. Those interests are not aligned.

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?

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#115

Post by gnicholas »

kibwen wrote: post #108
gnicholas wrote: post #100

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 nee…

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.

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.

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#116

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

mckn1ght wrote: post #111
EduardoBautista wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I even like to silence notifications on different messaging apps depending on my focus mode on iOS/macOS.

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.

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.

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#117

Post by gnicholas »

0xblinq wrote: post #103
gnicholas wrote: post #100

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 nee…

And what prevents these aggregator apps from having different settings for each network?

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?

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#118

Post by [deleted] »

languagehacker wrote: post #106

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…

[deleted]

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#119

Post by [deleted] »

gnicholas wrote: post #100

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 nee…

[deleted]

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#120

Post by jamiequint »

drkleiner wrote: post #55
Belphemur wrote: post #5

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.

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?

I hope not, have you used both apps? Texts is much more stable and easy to use than Beeper in my experience.
Post reply on HN