One of the charms of instant messaging like WhatsApp, iMessage and Skype is that you don’t need to talk to someone when you want to communicate something. It works well for many of us who are anti- social, in fact, even the social guys who loves to talk still use WhatsApp to communicate. It makes one wonder if people are just being lazy to talk or they prefer to just drop a line and two, go about their way and then come back to attend to the response.
In WhatsApp, on the right side, there is a microphone icon. Pressing and holding it allow you to record short messages and sent it over. On the other end, they see it as a playable link.
I find it awkward to use that feature. It’s like talking on the phone and what’s worse is that you can playback your own voice. And most often than note, we are uncomfortable with how we sound.
But lately, I do value the usefulness of the voice message especially in Malaysia when you have to send messages to people who does not read English, e.g. one of my contractors who fix electricity is from Klang and he cannot speak/read in English. And I can’t type Chinese. The best way? Send him a voice message. The weird thing is, I should have just call him and talk over the phone and yet, we both find it so convenient to send voice message. Once I started using this feature, it became apparent to me that there are many people doing the same thing publicly. You will see people holding their iPhone and pointing the bottom speaker into their ear to listen to the message. Talk about anti social!
In fact, in one particular WhatsApp group, some people use it to broadcast a very lengthy blog - it’s used almost as a very easy and convenient way to deliver a podcast! Who would have thought that WhatsApp is an engine for podcasting! It is actually being carried out actively in a couple of WhatsApp group I was in.
I think before we know it, WhatsApp voice message is going to be the de facto communication standard.
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