Despite Video, Text Still Rules, So does Voice

There are some interesting parallels between "voice" and "text," and the relationships can illustrated by the difference between "telephony" and "IP communications," or "text" and "video."

Voice usage continues to increase, even as more text, blogging, video and conferencing occurs as well. But voice is not necessarily "telephony." Voice is used in many different ways, even as buying of traditional consumer voice lines continues to decline in favor of mobile or VoIP alternatives.

Likewise, lost of news, commentary and entertainment now is moving away from legacy print and towards online formats. But text seems to have grown in importance as legacy "print" channels have struggled. Again, what we see is a pattern similar to that of "voice" usage. More usage, but using new formats, media and channels.

But user behavior is quite complex. As Steve Rubel points out in this post, text remains key for Web-based and mobile communications, even as Web video has emerged as the next wave of Web media.

One can look at video growth, telephony "decline", and make the wrong forecast: that people mostly will communicate using video. Likewise, one can look at the demise of newspapers or magzines and assume people are not reading. They're reading, but it is tweets, blog posts, news feeds and Web pages. Text simply is used in different ways.

As Rubel notes, though, an argument can be made that text still "rules."