Proper, and this can be a very US-centric downside, as a result of in different places these third-party messaging apps are extra dominant.
Sure. So iMessage is built-in within the iPhone working system in a really deep manner. However that’s not “premium.” That’s anticompetitive.
You wrote in a weblog submit late final month that each time there’s an outage to Beeper Mini your credibility takes successful and which you could’t maintain taking part in the cat-and-mouse sport with Apple to maintain it working. However you additionally mentioned you’re nonetheless decided to construct one of the best chat app on earth. What does it appear like?
Nicely, Beeper Mini was known as that for a purpose. It was a secondary app with a extra restricted characteristic set than our main app, Beeper. Beeper helps 15 chat networks. Beeper Mini supported one. So we determined to refocus our vitality again to our main app.
So, theoretically, Beeper might change into a very nice chat app that competes with Sign or WhatsApp, the place each events—iPhone customers and Android customers—obtain your app and go to that app container and message, proper? However Beeper Mini was attempting to truly deliver interoperability to 2 totally different techniques. How dedicated are you continue to to that imaginative and prescient?
That’s an necessary level. We’re in 2024, and you’ve got a portion of your contact listing on every of those totally different apps as a result of entrenched gamers have gone out of their option to make it very arduous so that you can depart their platforms.
It might be virtually inconceivable to start out a brand-new instantaneous message app at present as a result of the entrenched gamers have such a powerful maintain on being the default app on an iPhone or having a large set of customers. So the best way that you simply construct a “new” chat app is you interoperate with the prevailing networks. And also you make the transition as clear and straightforward as attainable. That’s what we’re engaged on.
A part of our imaginative and prescient is to embrace an open supply protocol that already exists, Matrix, and so if you use Beeper, you’ll get an account on this open supply protocol. You may nonetheless message your pals utilizing all of your different apps, however if you would like, you may ship them a message from that open supply protocol as effectively. Proper now that’s not the first focus for us, however will probably be over time as increasingly individuals be part of this community.
Nicely, thanks for taking the time to speak, no pun meant.
You already know, you requested, “Have been we anticipating this response?” No. The reality is, we constructed this app and we’re extraordinarily pleased with the way it got here out, as a result of individuals had been like, “Wow, this can be a nice expertise in comparison with the type of crappy inexperienced bubble chats we’d been having earlier than.” All of it occurred fairly shortly after that.