I’ve been very interested in voicemail because, like many people, you know, when it first
came out I immediately hung up the phone.
I didn’t want to leave a message.
And then, of course, I became upset when people didn’t have voicemail so I couldn’t leave
a message.
And then much to my shock and horror, I became upset when the person I had called answered
the phone because I didn’t want to speak to them.
I just wanted to leave a message.
And I thought that voicemail was a very interesting genre of communications.
But as we went forward and as corporate voicemail took hold and then as texting and other forms
of communication, e-mail, et cetera, and mobile devices materialized.
It became clear that voicemail was, deservedly so, an anachronism.
It was more and more work, less and less efficient for the value derived.
And so I think going forward one of the most interesting things that we’re going to see
is how people have different technology communication styles.
Increasingly I believe you’re only going to have conversations, voice conversations
with people who you know and you’re going to use texting and e-mail to set up a conversation
before you have a voicemail, or, excuse me, real-time conversation with them.
I think voicemail is an anachronism.
I don’t think people want to listen to 15 or 20 messages.
I think they’re happy to scan 15 or 20 texts.
So I think we’re in a stage where basically you’re going to tell a lot about somebody’s
personality whether they want to communicate with you via e-mail, via text, or they want
to talk with you on the phone.
And the last quasi-useful thing I can say on this is this is really a demographic phenomenon.
I don’t think there’s anybody I know under the age of 30 who listens to their voicemail.
And I think most people over the age of 50 are just too tired to go through their cues
of voicemail.
Voicemail is a great idea whose time has come and it’s gone.
So Coke pulling the plug on their voicemail system, I don’t think people will care.
In fact the irony is for the majority of people they already have a voicemail system.
It’s through their mobile phone provider.
Corporations are going to get out of that kind of a business.
And I’ll go one step further.
I think the era of corporate e-mail is going to vanish too because I think people are using
LinkedIn and Facebook, Yammer and other “enterprise social media platforms” to manage interaction.
Yes, I think everybody will always have an e-mail address, but in terms of time invested
and time spent I think within the decade e-mail is going to sound and smell suspiciously like
voicemail as a platform for where work gets done.