Voice Mail in Decline with Rise of Text, Loss of Patience

USA Today: A new study conducted by Vonage for USA Today finds that people are increasingly abandoning voice mail and using text messages and e-mail instead. The Internet phone company reports that the number of voice mails left on its systems has declined 8 percent since last July. In addition, the number of retrieved mails has dropped by 14 percent. Young people, in particular, are abandoning the technology.

Vonage says that people simply don’t have the patience to wait for voice mail. “They hate the whole voice-mail introduction, prompts, having to listen to them in chronological order,” said Vonage’s Michael Tempora. Instead, many people are relying on text messages or looking at e-mail transcriptions of voice messages.