Automattic purchases Beeper in $125 million deal; CEO to join
https://blog.beeper.com/2024/04/09/beeper-is-joining-automattic/
Automattic purchases Beeper in $125 million deal; CEO to join
https://blog.beeper.com/2024/04/09/beeper-is-joining-automattic/
This is a pretty stupid purchase. Beeper was based upon exploiting holes in the iMessage protocol. It was never going last. Why someone would pay for it after they closed the service is a mystery. I’m also not able to see the article due to paywall, so maybe there’s some great justification of which I’m unaware.
Here’s some archived versions that’ll let you read it: GhostArchive, Archive.ph (ghost has just the text, .ph has the full page)
Thanks!
Why you’d pay so much for a company that doesn’t have massively proven tech is beyond me.
What’s even more confusing for me is that for a lot of the services Beeper does still offer, it directly breaks their TOS too, especially Discord. They don’t allow logging messages which is basically what Beeper has to do anyway to be able to let you read anything through it, since it runs via the bot API on your account on Discord. Fine enough as a hobby project or small/medium scale thing, terrible business decision for a large CEO
Seems like an impulse buy with little thought put into it to me
That is/was only one of the services they offered, they have an all-in-one messaging app that lets you use a variety of other protocols (though I only discovered this about half an hour ago!)
Yeah, I just set it up because I don’t want Meta’s shit on my phone and my friend group insists on using WhatsApp. I still had to install the native WhatsApp client but I was able to remove it as soon as I had confirmed the account creation. It also means I can stop giving out my cell number when I want to meet someone from Facebook Marketplace to buy something.
They advise against removing the apps on your phone, but at the least, you can turn off notifications for everything other than Beeper and use it as a single interface. On the desktop app, it makes a bit more sense. I’ve stopped running the Telegram, Signal, and Google Chat apps. I just wish Google Voice played nice with integrations and could be added to the platform.
FYI, e2ee messages like Signal’s and Whatsapp’s are decrypted on Beeper’s server before they get reencrypted and forwarded to the recipient.
also, Whatsapp and Signal might log you out if you don’t use their client for certain time.
There is on-device Signal bridge option in the settings
yes, it’s been added in a version that has only come out of beta today, if I’m reading their blog post correctly.
It’s a matrix clone with built in bridging so you’re only using the matrix protocol technically.
it’s not a “clone”, it’s literally using Matrix protocol with their own servers.
Forks maybe a better word.
Blue bubbles is what you use now with or without beeper.