First, you need to know what real-time means. It is a type of interaction whereby the output resulting from an input is immediate, such that it influences the next input. If this is too geeky, put it in an instant messaging context and think of it as the type of thing that shows on your correspondent's screen any letter you type at the instant you type it.
Chatting like we do nowadays is not really real-time, since you give yourself the time and luxury of finishing the message, however long or short it is, before sending it as a whole. If this is not really real-time, it is not very far from it. That's why this is called near-real-time messaging. It is also called 'voicing'.
This can apply to voice as well. You record your voice (or rather the voice messaging messaging application does it for you) and send it whenever you feel it is good for sending. Unlike the common voice chats that we see in applications like Skype and Yahoo IM, which are in real-time, near-real-time voice messaging is like sending and receiving small voicemails.
Near-real-time voice messaging is new adopting the new trend of voice-to-text transcription through voice recognition. The recipient of the voice message not only gets to hear but also to read it. One problem that lingers as a shadow with voice recognition is the serious lack of precision in the transcription and failure to produce exact transcripts. For more than ten years now since Bill Gates promised considerable improvement in the technology, not much has changed. But in spite of this, near-real-time voice messaging applications are cropping up, like Say2go, for example. They too claim there is improvement in voice recognition technology round the corner.
Why Near-Real-Time Voice Messaging?
I am of those who believe that near-real-time voice messaging is not really a dire need in modern communication, especially with the poor voice-recognition technology that's around. That is maybe because I don't have activities that call for it. But promoters of that technology claim that it is very helpful in avoiding to impose a voice communication on someone at a given time, and so avoid distracting them from something more important they are involved in at that time; as doing so might put certain serious things, like a job, in jeopardy. With real-time voice, as it is now, if you don't answer the call, you lose it. With near-real-time, you choose when to answer the call, as it is recorded and waiting for you to read and reply.
