Microsoft has Cortana. Google has Google Now. Apple has Siri. While the leading technology companies have digital assistants offering voice-to-text features, social networks have lagged behind. That may soon change, as Facebook has announced plans to add a voice-to-text feature to its Messenger app.
Confirmed at the Digital Life Design Conference in Munich, Facebook"s vice president of messaging products, David Marcus, announced that the social media company is in development of a voice-to-text feature for the Messenger app. The Messenger app was spliced from the core Facebook mobile app a while back and was made a standalone app on smartphones and has since become a popular text messaging alternative.
While the benefits of voice texting through Messenger are pretty obvious, Marcus pointed out that users in areas of the world have a tougher time putting together typed conversations because of language complications. Some regions of Asia have such complex written languages that it makes the types messaging experience a bit cumbersome, making the voice conversion service more relevant.
The voice-to-text feature will rollout sometime in 2015. Once launched, the service will see variable improvement rates across the world, mostly due to varying language complexity and the need for user data to drive any necessary augmentations. The voice texting feature is not expected to cross over into any of the Facebook-owned companies, such as Instagram or WhatsApp.
Source: Wall Street Journal