Half of the voice messages sent on Messenger come from Cambodia. This was discovered in 2018 by a team from Meta (which was called Facebook at the time), which owns the app. Why ? Khmer, which has 74 letters, is notorious for its resistance to virtual keyboards. In Cambodia, everyone from tuk-tuk drivers to Prime Minister Hun Sen prefers to send voice notes over text messages. I found an article before the rest of the world in 2021.
Cambodia isn’t the only place in the world affected by the audio message fever, those short recordings reminiscent of old messages on answering machines. And in 2022, seven billion of them Sent daily via WhatsApp. According to a survey dated April 2023, 30% of people in the United States communicate in this way on a daily basis. And the number should be similar on this side of the boundary.
However, voicemails still generate a lot of grunts. Many people complain that they have to find a private place to be heard, or they roll their eyes when they receive messages that last several minutes.
However, voice messages provide several advantages. They allow you to express yourself in a more subtle way than writing, but without the need to disturb your interlocutor. Imagine a text that says, “I’m not available for dinner tonight, sorry. The underlying emotion can be difficult to detect. Conversely, a voice note would convey disappointment or regret through a simple tone of voice.
Another advantage: it allows us to maintain our privacy. In the iPhone messaging app, for example, audio recordings are set to self-destruct after two minutes. It is possible, of course, to change this function, but it is still more difficult to publish voice messages. All we have to do is think in comparison to a screenshot of a series of text messages…
However, you must also know how to use it properly. Etiquette guides have proliferated on the InternetShe advises us to limit our messages to 1 minute and 30 seconds and get straight to the point. In a column posted on WatchmanJournalist Annie Lord lamented that some of the letters she receives are long nonsense. It’s like listening to an unedited podcast. Do sum up. the nightmare !
Moreover, WhatsApp now provides this capability Accelerate the speed of reading voice messages…
Sometimes a simple text message is still the most effective way to talk to each other.
