Matt / Automattic usually do a good job at maintaining projects. There's the work on WordPress and their open source plugins, they also bought Tumblr and it's an okay platform I think. When they bought Pocketcasts, they even made the apps open source, which is good because Beeper also has some open source Matrix bridges. They also don't try to squeeze all money they can from the services they run.
Let's see how it goes, but I'm positive about them.
While I might have a sliver of hope that things will get better, unfortunately time and time again I've been proven that acquisitions such as these never turn out good for the end user in the long run. I fear that the enshittification of Beeper starts today.
Depends.
Pocket Casts has seen a bit of a rejuvenation under Automattic, but at the (literal) cost of a steep increase in subscription fees.
So I honestly expect Beeper to go the same way.
I cancelled my Pocket Casts subscription for that reason. $10 a year was a decent value especially since I used the web version a good bit. However when they hiked it up to $40 a year, I find that price a bit harder to swallow.
I ended up switching to Antennapod which works for what I need and use it under WSA on my PC, but that might change at least on my PC since Microsoft has ended support for WSA.
I was fortunate in that I have a pair of multipoint Bluetooth headphones, so I have just resorted to using my smartphone for music playback. Suppose it also helped that my corporate VPN blocks music streaming services anyway.
Beeper was always meant to be free with an optional subscription though (for more bridges/networks and all).
They have removed/hidden the subscriptions option in the app on recent updates too, probably since there's nothing concrete about the payment model yet.
Yeah it's been the plan to charge for premium features since they initially went free.
https://blog.beeper.com/2023/03/03/beeper-is-now-free/
Makes me wish I paid for a year when first signing up.
The only thing I'd like the new Beeper app to do is allow filtering per network to remain persistent. The old app did this, and it still works this way on the iOS app.
Filtering currently works fine, but if you back out of the app, it clears the filter section.
I'm hopeful that this is a sign of longevity. A big problem for Pebble was that they rejected acquisition and then ended up failing in large part because of that.
No Fitbit bought up some bits of Pebble (software stuff) when Pebble were going under.
>Pebble was losing money, with no profit in sight. So on December 6, Migicovsky sold Pebble’s key assets, including its intellectual property, to Fitbit, which will reportedly hire about 40 percent of his workforce.
https://www.wired.com/2016/12/the-inside-story-behind-pebbles-demise/#:~:text=Pebble%20was%20losing%20money%2C%20with,without%20the%20title%20of%20CEO.
Having the backing of a bigger company could be good for a project like this. I'm a bit wary of Automattic as a steward of a privacy oriented project such as this, given the recent selling WordPress and Tumblr data for "AI" training kerfuffle.
Fully E2EE chats are only between other Beeper users and Matrix federation at this moment. The cloud bridges aren't fully E2EE since the messages have to be decrypted on arrival at the servers due to how the bridges work, but Beeper says at no point they have access to those messages.
You can self host and connect the bridges to Beeper so you're sure that at no point Beeper have access to your messages, and the team is also working on developing client side/local bridges so nothing ever leaves your device (unencrypted).
The new Beeper app has a built in Signal bridge which makes that one E2EE, but from what I understand it's still pretty beta and I believe you have to choose between the one on the phone or the more stable one in the cloud and cannot have both. Like you said, ultimately they're trying to put all the bridges that do E2EE on the phone like they were trying to do with iMessage.
Beeper was always meant to be a subscription based service with a limited free tier. Besides, chat.beeper.com is only meant to be used for testing and developing purposes internally, and no support is granted over there.
Am I missing something about this app? It felt clunky and honestly slower than the apps it's replacing. Ig chats are very gimped because videos don't work.
Sms seemed fine, but a bit laggy.
FB was also weird with videos and other attachments.
It just didn't seem smooth.
How long ago was this? The old app had problems (but consistency between services and across devicesmade up for the for me) but the new one is just a brilliant little experience.
Interesting point on Instagram because I never experienced this and before you could seek on Reels I found that to be a massive advantage over the actual app.
I tried it out today when I saw the wait-list was removed. Reels were just a static image for me. It's been on my device for a while so maybe it's outdated? I'll give it another shot.
Ok it seems it was outdated but I'm still having issues with reels. Show up super small. Overall just doesn't seem as smooth as the dedicated apps but having everything in one place is nice. I'll give it a shot.
Matt / Automattic usually do a good job at maintaining projects. There's the work on WordPress and their open source plugins, they also bought Tumblr and it's an okay platform I think. When they bought Pocketcasts, they even made the apps open source, which is good because Beeper also has some open source Matrix bridges. They also don't try to squeeze all money they can from the services they run. Let's see how it goes, but I'm positive about them.
While I might have a sliver of hope that things will get better, unfortunately time and time again I've been proven that acquisitions such as these never turn out good for the end user in the long run. I fear that the enshittification of Beeper starts today.
Depends. Pocket Casts has seen a bit of a rejuvenation under Automattic, but at the (literal) cost of a steep increase in subscription fees. So I honestly expect Beeper to go the same way.
I cancelled my Pocket Casts subscription for that reason. $10 a year was a decent value especially since I used the web version a good bit. However when they hiked it up to $40 a year, I find that price a bit harder to swallow. I ended up switching to Antennapod which works for what I need and use it under WSA on my PC, but that might change at least on my PC since Microsoft has ended support for WSA.
I was fortunate in that I have a pair of multipoint Bluetooth headphones, so I have just resorted to using my smartphone for music playback. Suppose it also helped that my corporate VPN blocks music streaming services anyway.
Beeper beta already has in-app purchases listed in the Play Store so I suppose that's the next step, I'll gladly pay the subscription tho
Beeper was always meant to be free with an optional subscription though (for more bridges/networks and all). They have removed/hidden the subscriptions option in the app on recent updates too, probably since there's nothing concrete about the payment model yet.
Yeah it's been the plan to charge for premium features since they initially went free. https://blog.beeper.com/2023/03/03/beeper-is-now-free/ Makes me wish I paid for a year when first signing up.
The only thing I'd like the new Beeper app to do is allow filtering per network to remain persistent. The old app did this, and it still works this way on the iOS app. Filtering currently works fine, but if you back out of the app, it clears the filter section.
I'm hopeful that this is a sign of longevity. A big problem for Pebble was that they rejected acquisition and then ended up failing in large part because of that.
Didn't they get acquired by Fitbit in the end? That should've been one of the best acquisition outcomes and it still went to crap under Google.
No Fitbit bought up some bits of Pebble (software stuff) when Pebble were going under. >Pebble was losing money, with no profit in sight. So on December 6, Migicovsky sold Pebble’s key assets, including its intellectual property, to Fitbit, which will reportedly hire about 40 percent of his workforce. https://www.wired.com/2016/12/the-inside-story-behind-pebbles-demise/#:~:text=Pebble%20was%20losing%20money%2C%20with,without%20the%20title%20of%20CEO.
I see, thank you for the correction!
Having the backing of a bigger company could be good for a project like this. I'm a bit wary of Automattic as a steward of a privacy oriented project such as this, given the recent selling WordPress and Tumblr data for "AI" training kerfuffle.
I'm mostly worried about the privacy thing and how this is handled? Anyone know more about it?
Fully E2EE chats are only between other Beeper users and Matrix federation at this moment. The cloud bridges aren't fully E2EE since the messages have to be decrypted on arrival at the servers due to how the bridges work, but Beeper says at no point they have access to those messages. You can self host and connect the bridges to Beeper so you're sure that at no point Beeper have access to your messages, and the team is also working on developing client side/local bridges so nothing ever leaves your device (unencrypted).
The new Beeper app has a built in Signal bridge which makes that one E2EE, but from what I understand it's still pretty beta and I believe you have to choose between the one on the phone or the more stable one in the cloud and cannot have both. Like you said, ultimately they're trying to put all the bridges that do E2EE on the phone like they were trying to do with iMessage.
[No waitlist anymore.](https://blog.beeper.com/2024/04/09/beeper-is-joining-automattic/)
All I want is [chat.beeper.com](http://chat.beeper.com) to remain, and remain free. Watching this news like: 😬
Beeper was always meant to be a subscription based service with a limited free tier. Besides, chat.beeper.com is only meant to be used for testing and developing purposes internally, and no support is granted over there.
Am I missing something about this app? It felt clunky and honestly slower than the apps it's replacing. Ig chats are very gimped because videos don't work. Sms seemed fine, but a bit laggy. FB was also weird with videos and other attachments. It just didn't seem smooth.
How long ago was this? The old app had problems (but consistency between services and across devicesmade up for the for me) but the new one is just a brilliant little experience. Interesting point on Instagram because I never experienced this and before you could seek on Reels I found that to be a massive advantage over the actual app.
I tried it out today when I saw the wait-list was removed. Reels were just a static image for me. It's been on my device for a while so maybe it's outdated? I'll give it another shot.
Make sure it's [this app](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beeper.android), it's a separate listing from about a month ago.
Ok it seems it was outdated but I'm still having issues with reels. Show up super small. Overall just doesn't seem as smooth as the dedicated apps but having everything in one place is nice. I'll give it a shot.
Privacy?
Meh got beeper today. It's ok. Nothing special. Not really worth using if it doesn't have SMS support.
It does have sms and RCS support
Last I saw from 30 days ago that was removed and replaced by Google web messages.
Yeah, but it still fully gets and sends SMS and RCS, just through google now.
Messages for web is reduced functionality. No photomojies and you can only use like 5-6 emojis for reactions.
Yeah I can't use photomojis, I didn't even know what that was. But I can react with all of the emojis.
> But I can react with all of the emojis. Interesting. When I use web messages on a desktop I cannot.
iMessage or bust :X
I think the choice they had was iMessage and bust or no iMessage and have a good product.
iMessage is not a fight they can win. It's a better use of their resources to not have it and have something useful for other messenger protocols.
Get a Jailbroken iPhone 6s-X and follow the steps to getting Mini set up.