This article and the line “voice is a more reliable way to express oneself than text” got me reflecting on how culture plays a role. Do you think culture will influence the popularity of micro-podcast startups, voice notes, etc.,?
I’ve noticed that Belgians, Spaniards, and French people use voice messages way more than Canadians. The cultural competence coach in me wants to say it’s because of the multilingualism, the flexible side of the time scale (for Spaniards), and public transit popularity + distance culture (easier to record while on a train than on a bus). But the personal side wants to scream “I just said I’m in a noisy bar! How the hell am I supposed to hear this?” But since I don’t leave voice memos, I type that out in CAPS.
It’s true it allows for easier emotional expression and enhanced social connection, but I don’t know if it’s more efficient and convenient, especially not for the receiver.
Haha, loved this comment—I have travelled a lot in my short life, lived abroad in different places in North America and Europe like you too—so I can totally picture those cultural references, and I think you also probably nail the environmental and societal factors which determine voice-note usage too.
Sometimes how a whole country uses a technology is just plain old baffling and interesting. When I worked at Instagram and just after we launched Instagram Stories for example, data showed that users in Spain were very high content producers—so they would watch a lot of Stories, and then go ahead and produce their own. Where as other European countries were more consumers, and didn't find themselves making a Story after watching them.
With the voice-note in this case I was thinking of it as a storytelling tool— a call-and-response mechanism, for example, between brands and their customers. Some platforms, like Instagram, have downgraded voice notes to DMs only—so they are explicitly saying to the user they should be use for personal and known communication. But I'm certainly interested to see how/if the voice-note medium expands to beyond the personal 1:1 communication and could indeed be harnessed better by news organisations and movements to become a form of social interaction en masse.
It’s really interesting that the data showed Spain has very high content producers compared to other European countries. At first, I thought it might be because Spanish culture is known for its emphasis on passionate and expressive communication and cultural values placed on artistic expression, but those same reasons could describe many European countries. Might it be the fact that Spanish is much more popular worldwide than some other European languages, giving people from Spain more opportunity to understand, interact, and produce more content?
This article and the line “voice is a more reliable way to express oneself than text” got me reflecting on how culture plays a role. Do you think culture will influence the popularity of micro-podcast startups, voice notes, etc.,?
I’ve noticed that Belgians, Spaniards, and French people use voice messages way more than Canadians. The cultural competence coach in me wants to say it’s because of the multilingualism, the flexible side of the time scale (for Spaniards), and public transit popularity + distance culture (easier to record while on a train than on a bus). But the personal side wants to scream “I just said I’m in a noisy bar! How the hell am I supposed to hear this?” But since I don’t leave voice memos, I type that out in CAPS.
It’s true it allows for easier emotional expression and enhanced social connection, but I don’t know if it’s more efficient and convenient, especially not for the receiver.
Haha, loved this comment—I have travelled a lot in my short life, lived abroad in different places in North America and Europe like you too—so I can totally picture those cultural references, and I think you also probably nail the environmental and societal factors which determine voice-note usage too.
Sometimes how a whole country uses a technology is just plain old baffling and interesting. When I worked at Instagram and just after we launched Instagram Stories for example, data showed that users in Spain were very high content producers—so they would watch a lot of Stories, and then go ahead and produce their own. Where as other European countries were more consumers, and didn't find themselves making a Story after watching them.
With the voice-note in this case I was thinking of it as a storytelling tool— a call-and-response mechanism, for example, between brands and their customers. Some platforms, like Instagram, have downgraded voice notes to DMs only—so they are explicitly saying to the user they should be use for personal and known communication. But I'm certainly interested to see how/if the voice-note medium expands to beyond the personal 1:1 communication and could indeed be harnessed better by news organisations and movements to become a form of social interaction en masse.
It’s really interesting that the data showed Spain has very high content producers compared to other European countries. At first, I thought it might be because Spanish culture is known for its emphasis on passionate and expressive communication and cultural values placed on artistic expression, but those same reasons could describe many European countries. Might it be the fact that Spanish is much more popular worldwide than some other European languages, giving people from Spain more opportunity to understand, interact, and produce more content?