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The Slow Death of Voice Mail
HughPickens.com writes: Duane D. Stanford reports at Bloomberg that Coca-Cola's Atlanta Headquarters is the latest big company to ditch its old-style voice mail, which requires users to push buttons to scroll through messages and listen to them one at a time. The change went into effect this month, and a standard outgoing message now throws up an electronic stiff arm, telling callers to try later or use "an alternative method" to contact the person. Techies have predicted the death of voice mail for years as smartphones co-opt much of the office work once performed by telephones and desktop computers. Younger employees who came of age texting while largely ignoring voice mail are bringing that habit into the workforce. "People north of 40 are schizophrenic about voice mail," says Michael Schrage. "People under 35 scarcely ever use it." Companies are increasingly combining telephone, e-mail, text and video systems into unified Internet-based systems that eliminate overlap. "Many people in many corporations simply don't have the time or desire to spend 25 minutes plowing through a stack of 15 to 25 voice mails at the end or beginning of the day," says Schrage.
In 2012, Vonage reported its year-over-year voicemail volumes dropped 8%. More revealing, the number of people bothering to retrieve those messages plummeted 14%. More and more personal and corporate voicemail boxes now warn callers that their messages are rarely retrieved and that they're better off sending emails or texts. "The truly productive have effectively abandoned voicemail, preferring to visually track who's called them on their mobiles," concludes Schrage. "A communications medium that was once essential has become as clunky and irrelevant as Microsoft DOS and carbon paper."
In 2012, Vonage reported its year-over-year voicemail volumes dropped 8%. More revealing, the number of people bothering to retrieve those messages plummeted 14%. More and more personal and corporate voicemail boxes now warn callers that their messages are rarely retrieved and that they're better off sending emails or texts. "The truly productive have effectively abandoned voicemail, preferring to visually track who's called them on their mobiles," concludes Schrage. "A communications medium that was once essential has become as clunky and irrelevant as Microsoft DOS and carbon paper."
V-enema: The Act of rapidly going through your voice mail just to get rid of the icon/flashing light.
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
Of course, if my mom knew what voicemail etiquette was, I would probably have missed out on the most hilarious "I am surrounded by furbies and I have no idea what is going on, please call me" (that's the much abridged version) when she found her self downtown during the same weekend as the furry convention.
XDInd
"Sorry Staisy, I don't have time to listen to all that shit. Just tell me what you needed."
I agree with ganjadude. If I see you called it tells me that you wanted to talk to me. If I want to talk to you back, I'll call you. There is no point in leaving a message. Well, most of the time anyway. But important information is best conveyed by text anyway.
I also didn't know that you could have a phone without caller ID, but I ditched land lines over a decade ago.
And amazing that another poster said 29 wasn't exactly a spring chicken. Shit. I'm nearly 50. What does that make me? Ready to put out to pasture? I have no doubt that there is some 70 year old out there reading my comment now and thinking what a young punk I am.
Obviously, say, "Oh, I'll go listen to that and call you back!" Then call back 10 minutes later and say "Oh hey! I accidentally deleted all my voicemails! Mind going over it again?"
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Land line providers charge extra for long distance.
This is one of the biggest differences between the US and most other places in the world. I'm 36, from the UK, and remember long distance charges on landlines, but only just. Now just about all national calls from a landline are essentially free.
That's partly because the UK is less than the size of one US state, Oregon, whose population is under 4 million persons. You pack more than twice that many persons in London alone. When we say long distance, we mean long distance.
To your credit, when you say "a long time ago," you mean a long time ago.