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Over the past few weeks on our sister site, I spent some time going over a variety of visual voicemail services. The term “visual voicemail” has been most notably associated with the iPhone, but it is a trend which is certainly catching on. The idea is that you don’t necessarily want to listen to voicemails in the linear format provided by your cell carrier. Instead, you can flip through a list and listen to only those messages you wish to hear, in the order which you wish to hear them. Even then, though it takes too long to listen to your messages. So where does voicemail go from here?

Many of the visual voicemail services offer transcription, which figures to increase in popularity over the next year or so. It takes far less time to read a message than to listen to it, so this is an enormous advantage if you’re not driving a car. It also allows for skimming, so you can quickly determine if the message is even worth hearing.

Stefan of IntoMobile shares his anti-voicemail sentiment:

I should be so lucky to live in a country [Finland] where quite a large portion of people text you before they call to find out if you are free to speak. It isn’t a Finnish thing either, back when I was in Junior High School and my friends couldn’t reach me, they just left a text message.

As he goes onto note, because your message is limited in characters, it’s more apt to be to the point and serve a purpose. Nothing can irk me more than someone who leaves a rambling message where they don’t get to the point until the very end.

Will you be happy to see voicemail ride off into the sunset?

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