Technology

In the back of it, it seems to be a series of Matrix bridges https://github.com/beeper

The bridges are all open source, and they use matrix synapse as their server installation - though their client is a closed source fork of element with changes. You can use any matrix client to connect to it, and they say it's a standard synapse setup.

If privacy is a concern, bringing your own client should remove that concern as the rest is open source. It's also e2e encrypted, as any matrix server is.

I self host my own matrix homeserver with bridges set up using their code. The only bit of their stack I can't use is the client. I don't like that that's closed source, that's frustrating.

Edit: while writing this two more people made the same comment. Sorry!

The connections to the apps are all open source, as the other user said. And you can self host it too if you want to go that route

They will be offering a premium subscription offer for more bells and whistles other than the free option...I don't know anything about user betrayals conducted by Beeper.

Well known software built using Matrix. A lot of people have been following this project.

I agree, but this provides a path towards that. It is Matrix underneath so if we get a proportion of people using Beeper they it becomes easy to transition to using Matrix to talk to those people.

You kids know what a pager was?

Yes.

I think they mostly died when GChat turned off XMPP support and became a walled garden.

If Beeper does become a successful business though, there'll be a full time development team "playing catch-up" with money behind them. It's interesting if you read this that they're rolling out features ahead of the message providers in some cases!

They're also leveraging some existing infrastructure. Beeper is built on Matrix which does a lot of the heavy lifting for them.

Huh, in my opinion people simply moved away, because the underlying messenger were used less and less. Once everyone ran around with smartphones using WhatsApp, fewer and fewer people cared about MSN, ICQ, etc.

Right this sounds like giving all of my personal messages to one more entity.

Why do you feel like matrix has failed? I joined it recently and to me it looks like it’s kinda growing.

Beeper is Matrix in a trenchcoat, judging by their Github page.

How did Matrix fail?

It's the base for numerous messengers used by governments around the world, it has a userbase of more than 70 million core users (not counting the various closed messengers). Various competitors (e.g. Rocket Chat) have changed their base to Matrix.

And Beeper is Matrix with Bridges (which you absolutely could deploy yourself). In theory anyone could recreate the Beeper functionality with existing other apps/bridges AND be able to communicate with Beeper on their native standard - Matrix.

I'm skeptical. Trillian still exists, but hardly anyone uses it. It can't connect to a bunch of services because their operators decided to disable third-party access. I remember that even back in the day, it was constantly playing catch-up with network updates that broke compatibility. A "one chat app to rule them all" is a neat idea, but I don't see it working in practice.

Apparently it's based on matrix bridges, and you can self-host it if you want. Sounds intriguing imo.

The EU is forcing the big chat companies to open their gates. They have until April of next year to comply, so we might see a common protocol for chat pretty soon