Automattic, the company that owns popular online publishing platform WordPress, has added yet another service option to its already bulging list of offerings that include eCommerce, blogging, ad tools, journaling and podcasts to name a few. The company has paid $50 million to acquire Texts.com that brings all messaging apps into a single dashboard.
The company, which also owns microblogging site Tumblr, claims that its interest in the messaging platform would allow it to foray into messaging, which it described as the fourth market that’s integral to the modern web experience. In a blogpost, the company described the acquisition as an effort to bring “One inbox to rule them all”.
“In 2005, Automattic started as a publishing platform with WordPress.com; in 2015, the acquisition of WooCommerce added a commerce solution to those publishing tools; 2019’s addition of Tumblr brought a new suite of advertising tools to the company’s bench. Now, with the acquisition of Texts.com, Automattic moves into a fourth market that’s integral to the modern web experience: messaging,” says the blog post.
All messages on a single dashboard
For the uninitiated, Texts.com brings all messaging apps together on a single dashboard. This includes Whatsapp, Instagram, Telegram, Messenger, LinkedIn, Signal, Discord, X and iMessage. And the company claims that this won’t be the end of the list as it would be working to integrate more in the future.
Of course, they aren’t the first ones to try out a dashboard approach to all messages at one place but Texts.com provides end-to-end encryption to chats and other features such as scheduling messages, marking messages as unread even on services that do not offer this feature and get summaries of long group chats.
Readers would be aware that Automattic already offers a slew of options to digital natives starting with WordPress for publishing their content, WooCommerce to sell products online and Tumblr for blogging. In addition, there are several ad tools, journaling app Day One and Pocket Casts where users can add podcasts.
In fact, Automattic went a step further by acquiring ActivityPub as a plug-in that allows WordPress websites to connect to the wider web of interconnected but decentralized social networking apps such as Mastodon. The latest acquisition of Texts.com appears to bring in the entire sub-universe of messaging into this mix.
Creating a digitally connected universe
Automattic owner Matt Mullenweg recently spoke to the Pivot podcast that though the acquisition was a result of personal frustration at having to use multiple messaging apps that made tracking tough, it was also fuelled by the company’s desire to create a digitally connected universe on which more and more people are spending their lives on.
Of course, the fact that Texts.com never sends the messages to its own servers made things easier from a regulatory perspective. The messages go directly to the platforms to ensure their encryption and none of the servers host sensitive data, messages or account credentials, which means these information bits stay only on the user’s device.
Mullenweg told the podcast that he felt adding a messaging app to the company’s portfolio allows Texts.com to develop further on this path of dashboarding all messages. It also fits into Automattic’s plans because of its user-centric values of supporting everything that people use for their messaging needs.
Of course, one will have to wait and see how the company plans to integrate messaging into its other products. For now, Texts.com is available for $15 a month for general users and $30 per month for businesses. It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac as well as iOS and Android.
Does this mean companies could soon be using messaging services via their websites? Let’s wait and see!
