In China most people never went through the whole e-mail era and practically jumped right into mobile. QQ is the defacto communication channel and Wechat 微信 is quickly replacing QQ as the method of choice today. The point is, e-mail was intended to mimic letter writing, so "short" wasn't the point. Chat messaging and short voice messaging protocols via mobile devices and their clunky keyboards were, so why not adopt a new communication method instead of a new acronym no one knows?
