One of social media’s newest apps is called Bubbly, rolling out in India, Japan and Brazil and boasting about 100 million users. Gaining around 500,000 users in 4 weeks after some of India’s biggest Bollywood stars began using it, this service is said to work like Twitter, except users send audio messages instead of texts.
One of the arguments of whether or not this will be successful is if people find it easier to text or to listen. There are comments in the link supporting both sides, but my first reaction after reading the article was not that I’d prefer to text or talk, but how in the world I’d keep up with yet another social network, should Bubbly make its way to the U.S.! Keeping up with the main 3 (blogging, Twitter, Facebook) that most companies participate in takes enough time. Add to that that Bubbly requires the user to pay to listen to the sent audio message, and I don’t see it being a successful long term media channel, but a short fad that people may try a few times.