Kids of today have no idea who Mork was or where he was from. And it looks like Voice Mail will follow Mork into oblivion soon, according to the BBC.
Research by mobile messaging company (spot the vested interest) Mobeon has found that kids just don’t use Voice Mail, with users being mainly older people. The theory is that kids want instant synchronous communication (like IM) and oldsters are happy with time-shift delayed stuff.
But, thinking about it, this doesn’t really stack up. SMS is time shifted (or has the ability to be so) and that’s pretty popular with kids (in case you missed it). And older people have always had a choice in the last 50 years between instant (phone and face) and time-shifted (letter, fax, email, voice mail) and all of these have been mass market communication methods. Which channel people used depended on other variables, like degree of urgency, familiarity with the recipient and what communication details they had in their possession.
They also suggest that kids don’t need to leave messages as they have their phones switched on and near them all the time. Err…hello… most kids go to school or college, so how are they going to answer them? And they’re also banned in many work environments too.
I think that the explanation is rather simpler. Most networks charge for collecting a voice mail and kids would rather not pay for this. So, if you call a mate and they’re not there, you hang up. The call gets recored as a “missed call” and they call you back. This saves you both time and money.
Try it. Call a kid. Don’t leave a message. They’ll call you. Guaranteed.
But that’s not much of a story for Mobeon is it? Coz there’s no money in it.
The same article features a company called Spinvox, which allows you to convert your voice messages into text messages. This seems a great idea, in theory.
For a start, you can use any phone numbers they want you to have, without scrabbling around for a pen (assuming voice recognition is working 100%). And you can view SMS discretely in some meeting/class environments.
They do however charge you 25p a message converted for you. Note that it’s generally cheaper to collect a voice mail. So I’d say it was a corporate tool rather than a private user one.
—–>Follow us on Twitter too: @russellbuckley and @caaarlo
Recent Comments