Three years off the starting blocks, Beeper got gobbled up by the bigwigs behind WordPress.com and Tumblr. Eric Migicovsky, Beeper's co-founder, chirped that they'll keep buzzing as their own thing within Automattic, and the Beeper brigade—all 27 remote-working rebels—will join the Automattic army.

Migicovsky said Beeper is set to jazz up Automattic's messaging mojo. Automattic had already invested in Beeper in 2022 and snagged another chat app, Texts, for €47 million last year.

The buyout follows a David-and-Goliath tiff with Jobs' Mob, which put the kibosh on Beeper's grand plan to bridge the Android-iMessage divide. Beeper couldn't cash in on its app, and with just 30,000 users, it didn't entirely cause a stampede.

Migicovsky said the kerfuffle taught him who had his back. Automattic was helpful; both see eye-to-eye on the chat game's future."

Beeper sprouted in 2020, a brainchild of Migicovsky and Brad Murray. Migicovsky's no stranger to the startup hustle, having birthed Pebble, the smartwatch darling of the geek squad. The Beeper deal's a far cry from Pebble's fire sale to Fitbit.

Migicovsky got hung up on the messaging mishmash during the pandemic's heyday. He and Murray whipped up a service to herd all chats into one app corral, using the Matrix—an open-source, decentralised chat protocol.

Migicovsky's dream was to have texting parity between Android and iOS. Usually, Android texts to iOS show up as green bubbles, but blue is the exclusive iMessage. Beeper's Android app sent encrypted blue bubbles to iOS, shaking the status quo.  Apple liked the green bubbles because they enabled some of its braver, smug fanboys to bully Android users for being uncool and poor.

Beeper's standard fare used a fleet of Mac minis to relay Android texts to iOS without using SMS. Later, they devised a Beeper Mini app that enabled iOS notifications, letting messages flow between Beeper and iOS Messages. They nailed the blue bubble but had to dish it out for free when Jobs' Mob threw a spanner in the works over security worries.

By the end of 2023, Beeper Mini was on the ropes, but it did spotlight Jobs' Mob's iron grip on its software. Calls to probe Apple's tight-fisted tactics reached the DOJ and Senate Judiciary Committee, citing green bubbles as an antitrust red flag. It mysteriously did not happen in an election year.

Beeper is more of a symbol of the uphill battle against Big Tech's old guard than a standalone success. But Migicovsky's not down in the dumps. He's sticking with Automattic as Beeper's supremo and is pleased it didn't sell out to a tech titan.

Beeper's bet on Matrix, the open-source protocol, caught Automattic's eye. Beeper might not be a household name, but it juggled over a dozen chat platforms. It's akin to Texts, Automattic's other chat child, corralling messages from a smorgasbord of services into one digital den.

Mullenweg told TechCrunch he reckoned the tech world's been too buttoned-up, but he's banking on a swing towards openness. While WordPress is Automattic's crown jewel, he's betting that messaging might be the next big disruptor.

So, Beeper lives to fight another day, having dared to dance with Jobs' Mob—a feat few startups can boast about.