Fifty percent of Facebook Messenger’s total voice traffic comes from Cambodia

I understand why people use it but as a recipient I really hate voice messages. Here in Spain they are becoming more common too.

The problem is as the article mentions. Difficulty searching back, not being able to use Google translate (I'm still learning Spanish), and the time it takes to listen to them. Sending a voice message is faster than typing for the sender but much slower than reading for the recipient which makes it especially annoying in group chats where you end up forcing this extra time on all participants. For this reason I don't think it's very social.

And then there's the issue of listening to them in public, having to dig around for headphones if you don't want to bother your surroundings.

So in general if someone audio messages me I just ignore it until they type their message.

In most languages swipe typing is not a lot slower than talking anyway. And if people really want to talk they can use speech recognition.

I run all my chats through my own matrix server (with bridges) and I was actually thinking of making something that automatically tries to transcribe them. The problem though is that I speak 3 languages :)

> don't want to bother your surroundings

all apps with voice messages I happened to use support playback through voice speaker, if you put the phone to the ear as if you were just speaking with someone

but I don't really remember how I discovered that and it seems that majority of users don't even know about this feature

> In most languages swipe typing is not a lot slower than talking anyway. And if people really want to talk they can use speech recognition.

Not really, I disagree with "not a lot slower". It is much slower and much more frustrating than talking when you have to redraw a word for the fifth time and the keyboard insists on "Chegamiknit" when you want to write "Champagne".

Anyway, it's not an all or nothing thing. Sometimes it's going to be faster, more convenient and appropriate to send an audio message for both parties because tone and articulation convey meaning that text does not. edit: and when you know the other party can act on it. Eg: they can listen and can't talk back but can write back, or the inverse and you have to send them text messages because they can't listen (rushing to catch a metro or to their car) but they can read and they can talk back but can't write fast enough (because rushing to catch a metro or to their car) (yeah, it happened :). So, use when appropriate ?

I also suspect voice messages have different usage across cultures and subcultures and group of peers and the context.

It's also a different way to be with the other person, sharing an audio space. Of course there are limits.

Depending on how loud that speaker is, people around you would still be able to hear it, even if its up to your ear. Years ago when I used public transport more, it was almost daily that I'd be able to listen in on peoples phone conversations because of how loud their speaker was even when not using the speakerphone setting.

I am Sri Lankan and we have our own language, but most of the the people type the phonetic Sinhala word in English characters and it works really well.

Wonder why that did not happened in Cambodia.