Automattic is acquiring Texts and betting big on the future of messaging

Coffee price comparisons always feel a bit odd. I have some control over the price I pay for coffee, how often I drink it, it's quality, if I want to stop paying for it for a while etc. It has no financial equivalent to paying for 12 months in advance for a subscription service.

I don't think about how many coffee's my climbing gym subscription is worth, it has it's own value to me. I think this reflects a core difference between most buyers and sellers. The sellers often see money for what it is: fungible; where the buyer usually engages with a sale at a much more emotional level, even if practicalities are taken into account.

Perhaps you're not their primary target audience?

You are by your own admission not waiting in line at a cafe every morning. As someone that DID for a while, let me assure you that there are plenty of “normal” people that do.

I also know what I’m getting with my 2 cups of coffee. It’s worth a lot to me. I’m refreshed, energized and ready to be productive and get twice as much done! On the other hand, I’m not sure your app/tool has the same effect. Like I would never give up my coffee to use your tool, if I had a gun to my head. logically, your tool should be worth 1/10 the cost of my coffee!

Maybe it's just another apparition of that meme where Americans will use anything except the metric system: deer as tall as a bicycle, sinkhole the size of six washing machines, distance of at least an alligator...

Also, I don't use the services that they're combining for hours a day anyways? So I have a hard time seeing why I would with Texts. And for 50¢/day... I can switch between a couple tabs every once in a while.

For the cost of just two or three thousand cups of coffee a month, you could easily afford all the subscription services you want that compare themselves to the price of coffee!

It acts as a linked device, and you are interfacing directly with Signal's servers with the same protocol that their desktop and mobile applications use.

Pidgin is (was?) a niche nerd app that nobody uses anymore. Not everything is about technological advancement. We haven’t had one of these for a while. Certainly not with the new crop of messaging services. Who’s to say that it won’t catch on. Certainly not you.

I was about to say no it's not like Pidgin because Pidgin doesn't support Whatsapp, Signal, Twitter, etc, but... apparently it does? Anyone know how well this works?

https://pidgin.im/plugins/?publisher=all&query=&type=

I did a find before posting my comment and found yours.

"Cool I like Wordpress. But they bought a fancy Pidgin clone for 50mil...? https://pidgin.im/"

I didn't see the value $50 mill either. My immediate thought is many people use instant messaging but don't call it that they call it texts. The only reason I can see this being even a little popular is because automatic somehow comes out with a nice mobile app which looks to be in development. But also, if they convince people to pay to test. Which looks like they will "Billed yearly". It's an interesting move. I don't think I will be a customer, but I'm curious to see how it pans out.. At a risk of dating myself. I remember when AIM was free, and free video game Demos came in the mail and in magazines. So I don't see how paying for all of these apps that are free makes any sense. I suppose it would be a perfect tool for an individual to messages many people on many different networks with a couple of the baked in features. But man 100+ bucks a year to prevent the information overload that I created seems like not a good spend for me.

> So it's Pidgim for mobile phones basically?

Except maybe that Text actually works? I just tried Pidgin after being away from it for about 10 years. Its discord integration was lacking. It eventually showed some discord channels and some text in them, but it was incredibly spotty and the UI was useless. I walked away believing Pidgin was a dead project because it acts so much like one.

iOS app is in alpha, it's being internally tested right now.

In the first version of iOS, I don't think we'll be supporting iMessage. Texts runs on your device and not our servers (this is how E2EE is properly supported for example), this comes with some limitations.

We are working on solutions though, it's in the roadmap to support all popular platforms, on all devices.

We'll try to make the FAQ more clear ^^

Sounds more like a platform agnostic messaging center, like what Blackberry Hub or the Windows Phone tried to do 10-13 years ago. There was ICQ more than 20 years ago that tried the same thing.

FB Messenger, Whatsapp, Google Chat, all in one app. Of course the walled gardeners hated this and broke the APIs or changed the terms of service until every third party client gave up.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could separate the circles more intentionally, rather than by platform?

You can use labels and other features in Texts to prioritize across networks. We're forced to group networks when what we really care about is people.

I think they just purchased a domain and hope for the best.

They copied "Threads"?

They hire an attorney with good relationships at USPTO.

Totally!

Have you tried their new mobile app, [Element X](https://element.io/labs/element-x)? It's still barebones, but I'm impressed by its snappiness and overall look and feel.

Beeper [1] is built on Matrix, and their bridges to all the other messaging platforms are open source too if you wanted to self-host.

[1] https://www.beeper.com/

A lot actually ^^

Instant messaging is incredibly fragmented, I use Twitter to chat with people I know from the industry, use Instagram to chat with friends, Facebook for family and marketplace stuff, WhatsApp to interact with almost every business.

(I work at Texts)

The answer to the first part is a lot, in the 100s of millions, the second part is anyone's guess.

But the main question is, how many Messaging Platforms would allow a "direct" competitor to push them into irrelevance?

I would happily have paid for Pidgin back in the day.

Currently, I use Signal, WhatsApp, iMessage, Google Voice (I'm an American living in the UK, I use Google Voice for my US-based phone number and texting), Facebook Messenger, and occasionally Discord. I'm probably forgetting something, too.

I assume a lot judging by how many there are and how popular each are and that people want to communicate with everyone. Most of us may have most of our friends on one but then few on others and then at work probably on others. Without mobile apps though assume will be dead on arrival until it is and they might run into road blocks there and of course the platforms I’m sure will find a way to simply block this if gains enough traction and then the app becomes mostly worthless again for most. So while I’d love this and looks like a beautiful Mac app I’m not hopeful unless EU forces everyone to jump on board but then issues with encryption and privacy.

I also quite liked Simplenote when I used it.

No idea, but I’m not sure Apple will permit an iOS app that does that.

They probably use a "ghost" device on their end (e.g.: Beeper with their Macs[1]) or a helper app you install on your Mac to plug into Messages (e.g.: AirMessage[2] with its macOS helper app).

1: https://www.xda-developers.com/how-to-use-imessage-android-b... -- see screenshot #2

2: https://airmessage.org/install/

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