Voice Comments: Great Idea or Auditory Overload?

Posted on April 25, 2006

MyChingo is a new service that lets you record voice comments from your readers. The comments are recorded in the MP3 format and can be shared with anyone who visits your site. MyChingo says it uses a java interface to record visitor comments.

The audio comment window contains a Java applet which controls the audio recording and previewing capabilities. After your visitor has recorded their audio comments, they'll provide you with their name and email address and send it to our servers.

Heather Green at Blogspotting says she would prefer to read comments from readers.

At first, my traditional side immediately thought, this is a very very bad idea. Honestly, all I could think of was being forced to listen to, not simply read spam. But is that overblown? Spammers probably wouldn't take the time to record messages?
Still, even without the spectre of spam floating greasily above the room, my traditional side still wins. I would still rather read comments on this blog. So it would have to be a specific kind of blog where you would want to hear them.

Michael Baily, the developer of the audio comment technology, emailed Heather Green and said the service could be very useful for adding voice comments from readers to a podcast. Baily also explained how the blog owner could use MyChingo as a podcasting tool.

OR you can even use the entire system in "reverse" and send yourself audio comments, then mark them public, and let the rest of your site visitors listen to them - sort of like "Quick podcasting."

The service may be too much noise for some blogs. However, it does work with the social network giant MySpace where it could catch on. It is easy to imagine some of the MySpace users leaving and listening to voice comments. Bloggers with personal blogs might also enjoy hearing what their readers have to say or hearing a voice message from an old friend.