Comment by OJFord | Hacker News Reader

Comment by OJFord | Hacker News Reader

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> Over half of the people asked me how to send voice messages.

This is a very regionally desirable feature, in my experience.

I have never (deliberately) sent a voice message on any platform, nor do I know anybody (well/any more) who would. But I went to a university with a high proportion of Chinese students, and it was really striking how much that feature was used (in apps that supported it obviously).

I'm just speculating, but I wondered if it was at least partly because of the tonal nature (roughly speaking: four intonations for each vowel, rendering completely different words, not just subtle changes in tone/emphasis) of mandarin, and relatively large number of different characters, making vocal communication more efficient than written; to an even greater extent than that may be true of English, for example.

I'm not really sure what I'm saying. Maybe it's not good to burn one market, maybe it is good to focus on excelling in others if (if!) the alternative is mediocrity everywhere, I don't know. Your comment just reminded me and I thought it was vaguely interesting.

Voice clips are extremely used in South America. I'd say some people even send more voice clips than text messages.

Any app lacking them has no chance of gaining traction there.

I think it's because we dumped SMS (which has no voice clips) early and moved to WhatsApp (I think it's been the norm for like 8 years now in Argentina).

> I have never (deliberately) sent a voice message on any platform

same here.

really dislike how people essentially just ramble on and on for what could have been one sentece or a few words.

so it costs the recipient a lot of time and concentration to get the gist of the message.

maybe a cultural thing because my wife and here friends use voice msg a lot.

I have a family member with bad internet reception where she lives. Realtime voice communication usually cuts out, so voice messages are a really good alternative because they are uploaded at once and can be listened to on demand.

I think it depends on your style of using devices. I am on my PC 99% of times, so I have access to a full-sized keyboard, so I can type longer messages with no issue. But on a phone, typing anything longer than few sentences is a miserable experience, so people prefer to just use voice messages and say what they want to say.

Yeah, you're right, it's different. One half does not use voice messages, the other half cannot live without this feature. My peer group is mostly from Germany.

Do you message older people? I interact with multiple and they find audio messages to be indispensable. (Who can blame them when recording a voice message is vastly easier than getting your glasses and typing out a message on a small screen with even beady on-screen buttons). In addition to old people, I also message a disabled person to whom speech and recorded messages are her primary mode of communication.

In short, I don't think it's regional. It depends on the person with whom you need to communicate.

My grandmother has an iPhone and my parents would be baffled if she sent them a voice message.

I'm not denying it's helpful/required for accessibility, I'm just talking about 'in general' large scale use of it (or not).

Maybe it's less about glasses (if you have to find your glasses to type a message I expect you also need to in order to unlock your phone, open the app, and tap the voice message button) for older people than it is about accustom to IM - the brief chatty format is more like a telephone call than a letter.

(But those I've known to use smartphones haven't used voice messages - as distinct from telephone voicemail - anyway, as I said.)

I'm not doubting your (or your sibling's) claims, but I find it extremely difficult to imagine any older person preferring a virtual keyboard to voice messages (provided they are properly introduced to the feature, of course). Maybe this preference stems from how simple telegram (the app we use) makes taking and hearing voice messages? Perhaps it really is a regional thing after all. We need more data.

From my anecdotal/regional experience, people over 60 prefer to use voice messages almost exclusively while younger people prefer to text.

Maybe someone at telegram or whatsapp can provide statistical data to shed more light on voice message usage.

Yes, and no older people use it here in Sweden. I do not know anyone in Swden who uses voice messages.

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