At the time it was all going on, it seemed insane to basically be baiting one of the biggest companies in the world. And it was, except that then beeper got sold, and the guy running it got a cushy new job out of it.
In my mind, either that was the plan from the start, to go big and make a splash to make beeper valuable enough to sell, or the guy running it went all in way too soon, with no good plan for the inevitable crackdown. I err on the side of someone making an error of judgement rather than intentionally screwing up what they built, and they blew their wad.
Actually beeper mini (the imessage app) was an early version of their new android app that now has 15 chat apps built-in, and that still has imessage support (you just have to host the bridge yourself).
And they got bought by automattic, who wa salready chasing the “universal messaging app” with texts.com, so id say the plan was to be acquired since the start
Going all in vs apple.
At the time it was all going on, it seemed insane to basically be baiting one of the biggest companies in the world. And it was, except that then beeper got sold, and the guy running it got a cushy new job out of it.
In my mind, either that was the plan from the start, to go big and make a splash to make beeper valuable enough to sell, or the guy running it went all in way too soon, with no good plan for the inevitable crackdown. I err on the side of someone making an error of judgement rather than intentionally screwing up what they built, and they blew their wad.
Actually beeper mini (the imessage app) was an early version of their new android app that now has 15 chat apps built-in, and that still has imessage support (you just have to host the bridge yourself).
And they got bought by automattic, who wa salready chasing the “universal messaging app” with texts.com, so id say the plan was to be acquired since the start