WordPress Parent Company Acquires Beeper
Remember Beeper, the company that went back-and-forth against Apple over iMessage connectivity for Android? The company has been busy with its own thing since the whole debacle back in December of 2023, and although it has continued with its operations, it recently announced that it would continue to do so under the banner of Automattic.
For those unfamiliar with Automattic, the company is based in San Francisco and owns the likes of WordPress, and more recently, Beeper. The acquisition was made public via a formal announcement from Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky. Part of his statement reads:
I’m excited to announce that Beeper has been acquired by Automattic. This acquisition marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter as we continue our mission to create the best chat app on earth… It’s a fantastic match. Automattic is best known for supporting WordPress and WooCommerce – two open source software projects that underpin huge portions of the internet’s publishing and ecommerce infrastructure. Together, we’ll develop software for a third fundamental pillar of the internet: chat.
Migicovsky adds that Automattic has continued to works towards messaging software following its acquisition of Texts.com, a messaging app with a similar goal.
Moving forward, the respective teams and products will be merged together, with Migicovsky taking over as Head of Messaging. He does add that it will take a bit of time for Beeper to fully integrate after the acquisition. That said, it should be interesting to see how this new merger develops at the same time as platforms such as iMessage and RCS undergo significant changes.