Tag Archives: Automattic

Automattic Announces The World’s Best Inbox Just Got Better

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Messaging today is a mess, Automattic wrote. We have endless chat apps on our phones, each with different contacts and notification settings, making it all too easy to accidentally ghost family and friends.

That’s why we’re excited to announce today that Automatic has acquired Beeper, a universal messaging app that combines 14 different chat networks in one inbox. We began investing in messaging last year when we acquired Texts.com. Now, two of the most exciting teams in tech will work together to push the boundaries of messaging, giving us one app that will improve our focus and the way we communicate.

The best and only messaging app you’ll ever need

Beeper has been a leader in simplifying chat apps with a focus on streamlined user experiences. As the teams go through organizational changes,Texts and Beeper will merge under the Beeper brand. But the good stuff you already love isn’t changing! End-to-end encryption keeps your conversations secure, and you’ll have access to well over a dozen app integrations, with even more to come.

Eric Migicovsky, Beeper CEO -> Automattic Head of Messaging wrote:

I’m excited to announce that Beeper has been acquired by Automattic. This acquisition marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter as we continue our mission to create the best chat app on earth.

If you haven’t heard of Beeper before, welcome! We make a universal chat app — one app to send and receive messages on 14 different chat networks. You might have also heard about Beeper Mini, our briefly available iMessage-on-Android app.

In many ways, our journey has only just begun. Beeper has just over 115,000 users and was, until today, in beta. Given the state of the messaging landscape today, we believe there is a huge opportunity for us to push boundaries and create new experiences in chat. The majority of other chat apps have stagnated, entrenched in their positions with no significant new players emerging since Discord’s launch in 2015.

Given the state of the messaging world, we’ve long felt the need for a strong ally with the resources to support us on our quest. Automattic has a long history of putting user control and privacy first with open source, and great bilateral relationships with Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Matrix and others that we hope can usher in a new era of collaboration.

TechCrunch reported WordPress.com owner Automattic is acquiring Beeper, the company behind the iMessage-on-Android solution that was referenced by the Department of Justice in its antitrust lawsuit against Apple.

The deal, which was for $125 million, according to sources close to the matter, is Automattic’s second acquisition of a cross-platform messaging solution after buying texts.com last October.

In my opinion, there certainly seems to be a lot of people working for Automatic that appear to be very excited about the Beeper acquisition.

Day One Journal App Joins Automattic

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Automattic announced that Day One, a journaling app, has joined the Automattic team. This information was posted on the WordPress blog. Day One will remain under the leadership of Founder and CEO Paul Mayne.

While WordPress.com and Tumblr have you covered for sharing your thoughts with the world, journaling with Day One is just for you. In fact, privacy is at the heart of Day One, thanks to the full end-to-end encryption applied to every entry, in every journal.

A person can choose to share specific journal entries publicly, or can decide to make their entire journal accessible to be read by the world. According to Automattic, you can expect seamless integrations with both WordPress.com and Tumblr if you want to share part of all of your Day One journal.

Day One journals can also be published as hardcopy books. It is unclear to me what, exactly, the process is to go from digital journal to physical hardcopy journal that can be kept by the author or given out as a gift. The hardcopy option is interesting. It is much harder for a content thief to scrape an entire physical book than it is for them to scrape a digital book and attempt to sell copies of it.

TechCrunch reported that unlike WordPress and Tumblr, which focus on publishing to a public audience, Day One focuses on privacy. Day One offers end-to-end encryption of all of your journal entries. Those entries can include text, media, and audio recordings.

According to TechCrunch, Day One also allows auto-import of Instagram posts, voice transcriptions, templates, rich text formatting, location history. It also has integration with Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and more.

Verizon Announced Sale of Tumblr to Automattic

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Verizon Media and Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Automattic plans to acquire Tumblr.

The press release says that the terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, Axios reported that “a source familiar with the deal” put the price-tag “well below” $20 million, while another source put it below $10 million. Axios reported that Yahoo had paid $1.1 billion for Tumblr. Axios also reported that Automattic Inc. will buy the network and take on its 200 employees.

Tumblr is a media network powered by a massive community of independent creators and home to 475 million blogs.

“Tumblr is one of the Web’s most iconic brands,” said Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg. “It is an essential venue to share new ideas, cultures, and experiences, helping millions create and build communities around their shared interests. We are excited to add it to our lineup, which already includes WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Jetpack, Simplenote, Longreads, and more.”

I deleted my Tumblr account shortly after Verizon took over. My husband and I used to post photos of our cockatiels on a second Tumblr account, which we never got around to deleting. Personally, I feel that Automattic is going to do good things with Tumblr, and I definitely trust the company a whole lot more than I trust Verizon.

Will this change bring people back to Tumblr? It is too soon to know that for certain. Axios pointed out that The Wall Street Journal reported that Automattic’s CEO Matt Mullenweg intends to maintain the “porn ban” that Verizon implemented. The ban is one of the reasons why many people left Tumblr.

DreamHost Partners With Jetpack for DreamPress Offering

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DreamHost LogoWebsite hosting provider DreamHost offers a wide range of services to meet its customers’ needs. One of those offerings is called DreamPress, DreamHost’s fully managed service for users running WordPress-based websites. While it’s possible to run a WordPress site on DreamHost’s shared and VPS-based hosting solutions, DreamPress is different in that all facets of a user’s WordPress installation are fully managed by DreamHost. This can save time and energy for users who don’t want to deal with all of the updates and maintenance that come with a complex content management system like WordPress.

DreamHost is actively working to improve DreamPress. In a recent e-mail blast, DreamHost announced it’s partnered with Automattic (the company that steers the core development of WordPress) to bring premium features from Automattic’s Jetpack WordPress plugin to DreamPress users:

We’ve partnered with Jetpack to include a free Premium plan — normally $99 per year — with every DreamPress account at no extra charge.

With DreamPress you can level up your site with a powerful hosting environment, custom-built for WordPress. With the addition of Jetpack Premium you also have best-in-class backup and security scanning services, ad-free video hosting and additional WordPress support.

And:

Made by Automattic, experts in all things WordPress, Jetpack also offers additional free features for your WordPress site including a high-speed image CDN, brute force attack protection, hundreds of themes, uptime monitoring and much, much more.

DreamPress services start at $16.95 per month and all DreamPress users will have access to the new benefits provided by DreamHost’s partnership with Jetpack.