Automattic acquires Texts, a common messaging app

Automattic, the corporate that runs WordPress.com, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and numerous different common net properties, simply made a unique sort of acquisition: it’s shopping for Texts, a common messaging app, for $50 million.

Texts is an app for all of your messaging apps. You should utilize it to log in to WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn, Sign, iMessage, and extra and see and reply to all of your messages in a single place. (Beeper is one other app doing related issues.) The app additionally affords some further options like AI-generated responses and summaries, however its major objective is to unify your many inboxes right into a single interface.

Matt Mullenweg, Automattic’s CEO, says Texts is not only a product acquisition but additionally the start of an enormous new funding for the corporate. Thus far, he says, Automattic’s two fundamental areas of focus have been on publishing and commerce — now, messaging is the corporate’s third pillar. “I like to choose areas I really feel are so basic to the human situation that I can work on this the remainder of my life,” he says. “Self-publishing, commerce, and messaging covers a superb chunk of all human exercise, they usually’re additionally three areas the place I believe an open-source answer is important for the long run.”

In that long run, Mullenweg says he’s bullish on options like Matrix, which affords a decentralized and open-source messaging community, and different up-and-coming requirements for messaging. He’s already fascinated with how Texts would possibly gently nudge individuals towards extra open protocols over time. However for now, “I believe essentially the most user-centric factor to do isn’t attempt to choose a type of requirements and power individuals into it, however really help all of them and let the market and customers resolve.”

Mullenweg factors to 2 different issues he likes about Texts particularly. First, its founder, Kishan Bagaria: “Kishan is, I believe, a generational tech genius who we’ll be speaking about for a lot of a long time to come back,” Mullenweg says. The second is Texts’ safety mannequin, which depends on on-device encryption relatively than storing a duplicate of all of your messages within the cloud. “Simply as an engineer, I can’t ethically help” the cloud-first mannequin, Mullenweg says. He additionally thinks the cloud safety mannequin would possibly give current messaging apps a cause to close down Beeper and different makes an attempt at interoperability. “I believe the argument that there shouldn’t be interop is harder to make, politically, particularly with regulators,” he says. “However the technical argument for why it’s not as safe is an effective one for why to dam issues.”

The very first thing the Texts workforce will do at Automattic, it appears, is end its cellular app. “To do that on cellular with push notifications, and environment friendly battery, and all the things, is fairly tough,” Mullenweg says. “However I believe we’ve cracked it in a method that maintains all of the end-to-end encryption, and the place Automattic has no entry to your keys, your something.” Proper now, Texts is a $15 a month power-user device, however Mullenweg says that might change over time. “There could be some restricted free model sooner or later,” he says. “However in case you’re critical about this, you’ll need the paid — for lower than like the value of 1 streaming service or two cups of espresso a month, you’ll get one thing that you just’ll have the ability to use for hours a day.”

Mullenweg and Automattic see a giant future for messaging, as extra on-line interplay shifts away from public-first social networks and towards issues like group chats. Hardly anybody has discovered tips on how to construct a significant and sustainable enterprise from chat, however Mullenweg thinks it’s doable. And he thinks it begins with making your messaging rather less messy.