Pebble founder launches Beeper, a universal chat app that works with iMessage and others - TechCrunch

Through the newly launched app, Beeper, users can connect with 15 different messaging services, including WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Instagram and Twitter DMs, Messenger, Skype, Hangouts and others — even, through a few tricks, iMessage.

Migicovsky began to work on Beeper as a side project with Tulir Asokan, a Matrix contributor he met in a Matrix chat room.

To make Beeper (previously called Nova) work with all the different chat apps, they had to build these connecting “bridges.” This code is also open-sourced and available at Gitlab.com/Nova.

This means Beeper, the company, can’t read your messages, Migicovsky says.

But it’s not the only way Beeper can make iMessages work.

Mac users with an always-on device can instead choose to install a Beeper Mac app to work as the bridge.

Even if Apple somehow stopped Beeper from providing jailbroken iPhones to users, the company could redirect their customers to acquire their own old iPhones from Craigslist instead.

And Beeper is not the only startup to try to centralize chat applications, either — Texts.com is developing a similar system.

He says Beeper is slowly onboarding users as a result.

Instead, the team is building a platform that would allow people to build more tools and apps on top of Beeper — a system sort of like Gmail’s plugins.

Migicovsky declined also to detail how the work on Beeper is being financed but when asked if Beeper could be the next step for him — as in, a new company to work on — he replied, “possibly.”.