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Beeper acquired by Automattic

blog.beeper.com

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Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#231

Post by chiefalchemist »

rwbt wrote: post #113
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.

I think what they're saying is, Automattic buys products that are on the way out, not on the way up. So while Automattic might be great stewarts of has-beens, is that a good fit for Beeper, a company in a market that demands up and comer-ness?

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#232

Post by maxloh »

BadHumans wrote: post #18

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.

IMO hidden APIs are not quite safe to use. As a user, you are susceptible to be banned by the service when they find out that you have another active session in another country or city.

Some users on Reddit reported that they get suspended by Instagram because of Beeper.

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#233

Post by dqv »

xinayder wrote: post #220
thoughtpeddler wrote: post #195

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?

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?

A more succinct question would be "can antitrust laws override the ToS?" The answer is "yes". The FTC can even make Apple change its ToS through a consent decree (and possibly through other mechanisms as well). A ToS can't shield you from antitrust enforcement. In this case, it might even hurt Apple, especially if it can be shown that Apple doesn't consistently apply this rule.

But let's say it's not antitrust, which is what your question is trying to imply. Apple will still need to answer to the other ways it makes third-party messaging apps worse on iOS - automatic offloading and share extensions being two examples.

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#235

Post by photomatt »

freedomben wrote: post #197

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 o…

Our three missions are to democratize publishing, commerce, and messaging. This fits in the third.

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#236

Post by photomatt »

markx2 wrote: post #209
Andrex wrote: post #173

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

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 stil…

I dislike that third-party advertising network stuff too, hopefully we can get rid of it soon and replace with Blaze, no calls to third-party ad networks.

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#237

Post by fencepost »

erohead wrote: post #65
gwerbret wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 inve…

Also worth noting that some past Automattic acquisitions have also been open sourced, e.g. Pocket Casts back in 2022. There's a LOT of stuff in the >900 Automattic repos on Github: https://github.com/orgs/Automattic/repositories

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#239

Post by heyoni »

rw_grim wrote: post #225
erohead wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inve…

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.

I haven’t used pidgin in years but does that Teams plugin really work? I’ve seen projects try to integrate it into matrix and drop off because it was too hard.

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#240

Post by heyoni »

xinayder wrote: post #219
erohead wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inve…

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…

The only thing the beeper client itself brings over your garden variety matrix client is a coat of paint. It’ll make group chats between you, your friend and the bot that’s forwarding everything look like a private chat. Or the chat between a phone # and you will look like the contact name and you and are talking (and if that contact changes so will the chat).

Basically beeper’s open source contribution right now feels like it’s hit a point of no return. I say this as someone who contributes to one of the bridges on my free time. I now know enough about it to feel confident that spending time contributing is time well spent _if_ you’re ok dispensing with the creature comforts the beeper app provides. What I mean by that is that you can always run bridges against your own matrix instance using any of the other open source clients.

It’ll be ugly as hell, but it will work. What we really need to worry about now are the platforms messing with our ability to take our data off of their systems and into our own. There are a million ways to otherwise hack the existing open source matrix clients to make them look however we want.

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