Beeper, the app that brought iPhone messaging capabilities to Android smartphones, was acquired by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, to support the development of a single service for sending and receiving chats with WhatsApp, Signal, LinkedIn, and more. I did.
The deal, worth about $125 million, was announced Tuesday. The move comes as regulators in Europe and the United States are pressuring the biggest technology companies to open up their messaging services to third parties. Regulators believe this will make it easier for people to communicate with friends and family or switch messaging providers.
Toni Schneider, Automattic's interim CEO, said Automattic is betting that the changing regulatory environment will increase public interest in unified messaging systems like Beeper.
Beeper is Automattic's second messaging service acquisition. Last year, the company acquired Texts, an iPhone app that aggregates messages from Instagram, iMessage, and more. Schneider said Beeper and Texts employees will integrate their systems into a single app that will work not only on computers but also on iPhones and Android smartphones.
“We all have the problem of, 'I know I had this conversation with this person, but I can't remember where,'” Schneider said. “We think there is a lot of innovation possible in this area.”
Eric Migikowski, who co-founded Beeper in 2020, said Beeper and Texts will offer integrated services this year. The teams that founded these companies will gather in Portugal in the next two weeks to begin the process.
“What we were really fighting against was a lack of interest in new experiences in chat,” Migikowski said.
Last year, Beeper released an app that gives Android phone users the ability to send encrypted messages and high-definition videos to their iPhones. The app added over 100,000 users in three days before Apple changed its iMessage system and blocked the app.
A Justice Department lawsuit accusing Apple of maintaining an iPhone monopoly didn't specifically mention Beeper, but a complaint filed in March highlights the conflict between Beeper and Apple. The problem was mentioned. The department accused Apple of making iPhone users “less safe than usual” by “rejecting solutions” for smartphone messaging such as those offered by Beeper.
After a testing period that limited the number of app users to about 100,000, Migikowski said Beeper will soon be available for anyone to download. The company had 466,000 people on its waiting list. About 60% of users use his Android smartphone.
Migikowski said Automattic was an early investor in Beeper, raising $16 million from investors including Y Combinator and Initialized Capital. Last week, 27 Beeper employees officially started working at the new company.