After Texts.com, Automattic acquires Beeper

Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has taken a significant step in the field of online communication with the acquisition of Beeper. This strengthens their messaging position after the acquisition of Texts.com with a similar focus on interop in December 2023. This move could represent a significant opportunity for the XMPP protocol (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, formerly known as Jabber), an open standard for instant messaging.

XMPP, known for its role in unifying messaging services like ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo in the early 2000s, remains a pillar of interoperability. With this acquisition, Automattic could potentially align Beeper with XMPP to promote a more open and interconnected messaging ecosystem.

While Beeper was already integrating messages from various platforms into a single application, adopting XMPP as a pivot format could further facilitate these connections, leveraging a protocol already standardized by the IETF.

This acquisition, announced in early April, comes just after the implementation in Europe of the Digital Markets Act, which requires major instant messaging operators to open their messaging systems to allow for interoperability. Automattic’s central position in web hosting and its approach based on standards and open source code could enable a significant player to influence discussions between Europe and major proprietary messaging players.

If you add the fact that Apple will add support for RCS (Rich Communication Suite) in iMessage to enable better interoperability with Android devices, something is really changing in the messaging world.

Is this a new hope for the future of messaging?