This whole saga is fascinating.
Beeper Mini launched on Tuesday and rocketed to top 20 of Play Store charts. It was an instant hit. From what we can tell, Beeper Mini was the fastest growing paid Android application launch in history. In the first 48 hours, it was downloaded by more than 100,000 people.
The reason for its success is clear: Android and iPhone customers desperately want to be able to chat together with high quality images/video, encryption, emojis, typing status, read receipts, and all modern chat features. We all want a fun, easy and secure way to chat. For a glorious 3 days last week, Beeper Mini made this possible.
On Friday, we started getting reports that Beeper Cloud and Beeper Mini users could not send or receive messages. We investigated the issue and started working on a fix.
Within 24 hours, we fixed the issue for Beeper Cloud and published an update. Beeper Cloud users can now send and receive messages. It’s working exactly as it did before Friday.
I think legislation is needed to ensure chat apps interoperate properly.
Yes it's only an "inconvenience" and not a "safety" issue with the way things currently are.
However, messaging on a phone is one of the most important things on planet earth. The world would grind to a halt now without it. It's how humanity primarily communicates with each other.
Making messaging better would only improve everyone's life.