Alert observers of technology may have picked up on the fact that there are now a million zillion squillion ways to get in touch with other people. Instant messaging, texting, all sorts of other ways. And Voice Mail, I’ll capitalize it to make it a proper noun so you’ll feel more empathy, is being left out of the shuffle.
From USA Today:
In data prepared for USA TODAY, Vonage, an Internet phone company, says the number of voice-mail messages left on user accounts was down 8% in July from a year ago.
Checking one’s voice mail seems to be considered an even a bigger chore than leaving a voice message. Retrieved voice mail fell 14% among Vonage users in the same period.
I love the disparity in those numbers. It means there are all these orphaned messages that are never being checked at all. Also USA Today can’t decide on hyphens.
Among the reasons people didn’t like Voice Mail was the long set of instructions people leave about leaving your message after the tone and what information to include on your message AS IF WE HAVEN’T BEEN LEAVING RECORDED PHONE MESSAGES FOR DECADES.
Anyway, thanks for your service, Voice Mail.
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