13 ms·

Duolingo S-1 IPO

256 points by marc__1 5y ago

martyvis 5y ago
From prospectus -" For many, Duolingo has become synonymous with language learning: for example, on Google, people search the term “Duolingo” nine times more often than “learn Spanish.” I would imagine the sum of "Learn <any language>" would exceed searches for Duolingo - do they really think it has become genetic like Kleenex?
- JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago
  It seems inaccurate as well. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=duolingo,learn%20Spanish https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=duolingo,l... duolingo - 49, learn Spanish - 16 That's slightly over 3x, nowhere near 9x.
  - BrianSenator 5y ago
    If you change from US-only to worldwide, you roughly get their figure.
    - JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago
      I'd be curious how much of their revenue is ex-US. It's an interesting stat, but if we've expanded the cohort massively to include a bunch of exclusively free users, then it's less so.
    - poopypoopington 5y ago
      Which itself is misleading because people searching in non-English languages will search "duolingo" while they will not search "learn Spanish" but instead their language's equivalent
    - zild3d 5y ago
      Comparing worldwide isn't really a fair comparison if Google doesn't internationalize the trends "Learn spanish" is "impara lo spagnolo" in italian "Duolingo" is "Duolingo" in every language https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=duolingo,learn%20Spanish,impara%20lo%20spagnolo https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=duolingo,learn%20...
      - tinfoilheadsock 5y ago
        this guy i18ns
- bberenberg 5y ago
  The isn't deceptive because "Learn <any language>" vs Duolingo. It is deceptive because they offer many languages, so it's really "Learn <any and all languages Duolingo supports>" vs Duolingo.
- purple_ferret 5y ago
  considering how much rosetta stone held the same position and quickly fell out of favor, I wonder how much of a selling point it is.
  - gtaylor 5y ago
    What happened to them?
guerrilla 5y ago
Any predictions as to what kind of changes to the app this could lead to?
- NtochkaNzvanova 5y ago
  Pressure to maintain revenue growth will lead them further down the path they've already been on for a while (long-time non-paid Duolingo user here): longer, more frequent, and more annoying ads, and more frequent upgrade calls-to-action. I swear there are some days when I'll do ten lessons and see the exact same upgrade ad after every single one.
  - abecedarius 5y ago
    It seems like a trap they dug for themselves: optimize the drilling process for engagement instead of speed of learning, maximize eyeballs, advertise -- and that sours me on the paid upgrade, because the drilling is such a grind. I'd happily pay if the instruction felt efficient.
- bombcar 5y ago
  You haven’t purchased Duolingo stock today. You know what happens next.
Jakobeha 5y ago
I use Duolingo to learn Spanish. It's very simple but the streak system has kept me making slow progress. I've only gotten to "Checkpoint 3" (of 7) but it seems to be working well - I don't speak fluent but I can usually read signs etc. in Spanish and actually understand them. The main issue I can see them facing is: it's very simple, so easy to clone. And Duo has its flaws, so I wouldn't be surprised if of those clones are a lot better. I like Duo, I use it now, but I could switch to another service in 1 second.
- vmception 5y ago
  In the Risk Factors section > The online language learning industry is highly competitive, with low switching costs and a consistent stream of new products and entrants, and innovation by our competitors may disrupt our business. I don't personally like Duolingo. Formal education has been better for me, with languages. Both Duolingo, Memrise and Rosetta Stone neglect to tell you why any language rule exists or what contexts its used in and just procedurally generate gendered ways to ask for an Apple for 50 levels of lessons, pretending like rote memorization and classical conditioning is useful. I would say that it is not, context is very important. Enough people believe this is useful, like you, you want to read signs. This won't help you notice that the entire color spectrum can be wildly different in different languages and cultures, or that you sound like you used Google Translate and everyone will look at you weird because they speak in a trendy way. As for a company, its just ARR. Enough people will pay for it and use a subscription, that's good enough.
  - Jakobeha 5y ago
    I should've mentioned that I actually took Spanish classes a few years before Duolingo. Those classes taught me the grammar and why the rules exist, but I didn't memorize many words (or I forgot) and I had serious trouble understanding actual Spanish speakers. Duolingo "teaches" alternate tenses weirdly and IMO too late. But it does well for memorizing words, and it has people speaking with actual Spanish accents and forces you to understand them. So it's particularly helpful for me.
    - 5y ago
lhorie 5y ago
Interesting timing. Duolingo is a bit like Zoom in the sense that they got insane growth last year due to everyone being stuck at home. That should make the financial numbers look exceptionally good for IPO.
- dheera 5y ago
  But now everyone is itching to travel and so maybe they'll continue the insane growth as people learn languages of the places they want to travel to.
- vmurthy 5y ago
  A few things about the timing in addition to lockdown induced growth :) 1. They raised their Series A in 2011 and raised a few rounds between 2012-2015 [0]. VCs usually have a time horizon of 5-7 years so this might be another reason. 2. Interest rates continue to be low (not that this is news) so stock markets might be more receptive. All in all , a great result if it lists at ~4 or 5 billion$ given that their latest valuation seems to be about $2.2 billion [1] [0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/duolingo/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/duolingo/company_fin... [1]https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/18/language-learning-app-duolingo-confirms-it-has-raised-35m-on-a-2-4b-valuation/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/18/language-learning-app-duol...
umvi 5y ago
I tried so hard to get into Duolingo but I just felt like I was making progress so slowly. I much prefer italki. It's a lot more expensive than Duolingo, but worth it IMO to actually talk to a native speaker regularly.
- rememberlenny 5y ago
  Cool to see italki mentioned here. italki.com was the first startup job I got out of college over 8 years ago in Shanghai, and where I met my current cofounder.
  - HKH2 5y ago
    I used to use it to get people's Skype addresses and do p2p learning. It seems they've cracked down on that a lot.
dlevine 5y ago
I worked all the way through Duolingo's Mandarin curriculum a couple of years back (after having basic knowledge from studying on another paid site). I can say that it was definitely fun, and it was easy to study every day. The downside was that I was still at a pretty basic level when I finished their curriculum. Logged on just now, and they haven't added any new content since I finished. For people who just want to learn a few words of a foreign language and have fun while I'm doing it, Duolingo is great. And I'm sure that the market is huge.
- DantesKite 5y ago
  I imagine the market for people wanting to learn English is even higher.
  - HKH2 5y ago
    Much higher. When I last checked, it was much easier for an English speaker to find a Mandarin penpal than the other way around.
- HKH2 5y ago
  There are plenty of good Mandarin decks on Anki, especially ones with sentences/idioms. (You just have to be careful with the Pinyin at times as it may be automatically generated and some characters have more than one sound/tone.)
  - Apfel 5y ago
    Agree strongly with this. The Spoonfed Chinese deck is so good that it's worth actually paying for. I think it's only $3 or so now.
- throwaway09223 5y ago
  I'm also working through their Mandarin and I'm stunned they only offer simplified. It would be so easy to implement traditional characters. It's fun and free, which is nice, but it's really nowhere near as good as other paid platforms.
anw 5y ago
I really like Duolingo. It's not my favorite way of learning a language§, but they do a good job of pounding vocabulary into your head over and over. I will never forget that jeruk is "orange" in Indonesian. However, taken from "Risk Factors" on this S-1: > •users feel that their experience is diminished as a result of the decisions we make with respect to the frequency, prominence, format, size and quality of ads that we display; Duolingo has a big problem with both their ads and how they promote their Plus plan. (I hope to never see an owl flying through space again) Primarily, the quality of the ads I see are those stupid fish games or the "pull this pin to drop lava on the knight" that you see advertised on Facebook. I'm sure they're making money off of views, especially since you can't proceed in your lesson until you watch the video, but it cheapens the brand name of Duolingo (at least for me). If they had ads for anything language, travel, or even food related, it would feel more on par with their branding. But so many other dollar grab apps do the same thing [regarding those kinds of video ads] that it feels like I'm just looking at another cheap app. Secondly, how they promote their Plus plan. You are limited in how long you can access their platform by how many hearts you have. Miss enough questions, your hearts run out. Run out of hearts, you're restricted from proceeding further in your studies. You must buy hearts to stay on their platform. This feels counter intuitive, as you are now kicking users off of your platform and lose the ability to sway them towards other things you have to offer. I have found that between carrot and stick approaches, it is usually better to use a carrot where you can. § - For my style of learning, I've found Pimsleur to be one of the better approaches. Breaking sentences into phrases, phrases into words, and down words into syllables really helps me grasp the langauge more, especially with the context that goes around in the "story".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- broof 5y ago
  Duolingos website actually has different features (and less/no ads for the mobile version of the website). On iPhone you can export the website itself to your home screen and it’s essentially an ad free version of the app with better features. I found it to be way more enjoyable this way
Semaphor 5y ago
My wife used Duolingo to get most of the way to A1 levels (she then did some free Deutsche Welle stuff in preparation for the exam, but that was it). And for that, it’s good: Getting the basics of a language.
purple_ferret 5y ago
I remember looking into applying to them but back in the day they claimed they only hired Phds. Which is interesting because their app or its teaching style never turned out all that exceptional
- HKH2 5y ago
  Yes it's far too repetitive for more ambitious learners. Also, all the delays/animations are really bothersome. If you set it up well, learning has its own rewards, so you needn't focus so much on gamification.
- wraptile 5y ago
  Reading material is laughably bad and as far as I remember is not even available in the mobile app (or at least was for the longest time). So people are just randomly guessing grammar rules and forums are constantly spammed with the same explanations.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
I've personally found duolingo to be a poor way to learn a language. It gets none of the nuances right and is mostly just for entry level vocab. My favorite method is this guys using anki: http://brianjx.altervista.org/GermanC2exam.html http://brianjx.altervista.org/GermanC2exam.html His stories on German and Italian are fascinating reads because he was in his later years in life when he learned it! It's just a general nod to remember, you're never too old to learn!
mpva 5y ago
How do we buy into Duoloingo stocks?
- haliskerbas 5y ago
  They filed for IPO. If this goes through, the stock will likely be listed on some stock exchange, and a stock broker will facilitate your purchase of them.
  - mpva 5y ago
    Thank you.
cletus 5y ago
So I did Spanish on Duolingo for awhile a few years ago, as in the whole way down the tree. In the end I wasn't really satisfied, for several reasons: 1. Honestly I'm not sure I remember any of it. I found the retention to be pretty terrible. Maybe that's just me; 2. Answers were often obvious with no knowledge of the material. For example, if something is a question and only one of the answers is a question then that's your answer. This is a pretty common problem with tests I find. Test-taking is a skill you can learn, which is useful... for passing tests. Back in college I can remember getting 80%+ in French multiple choice tests knowing nothing about French. Here have been some of my go tos over the years: - With multiple choices where answers are randomly distributed you'll find each answer letter occurs just about as often. So if you have 100 questions with 4 options each but only have 16/90 As, there's a good chance a lot of the remaining answers are A. Yes, test preparers can assign them uneven weights to defeat this. My experience was almost no one did; - One question can give you the answer to a completely unrelated question. So in a language test you may need to conjugate a verb and be unsure about it but another question will have that verb conjugated in a sentence; - So many times I've seen tests where two or more questions are based on the same underlying piece of knowledge that could be one of two things. You answer one question one way and the other one the other so you will get 1 of them right. It's usually better than gambling, which may mean 0. But you may also need to get lucky in which case it might be better to shoot for 2 risking 0 instead. Honestly I think it's tests like these that taught me a lot about managing probability. - Lastly, and this one may seem obvious but it's not for some reason: answer every question no matter how dumb your answer may seem. If it's a freeform answer you may get partial marks for something. It costs you nothing to try. I've occasionally seen multiple choice tests that penalize you for a wrong answer, which requires altering the strategy. I think I've seen this twice, ever, however. But I digress... 3. Likewise where you had to pick words to fill out a sentence, your choices were so limited the answer tended to be obvious. 4. Around that time Duolingo started the pressure to monetize by adding the hearts system, which basically penalized you for getting anything wrong such that you couldn't continue if you made enough errors. This then created the mental barrier of not wanting to get something wrong and googling it to make sure. Just the act of worrying about it was distraction enough; 5. I found the lesson structure to be haphazard, like the topics had pretty random selections of words. I feel like it would've been better if they'd focused on the most common words and phrases used conversationally.
pnathan 5y ago
Good for them. I wish it was available when I was taking classes in college. I wish they went deeper in the grammar and explanatory material - the boring things that make a language work. :-}
vmception 5y ago
tl;dr on their financials and growth?
- umeshunni 5y ago
  162M revenue in 2020 (vs 71M in 2019) 15M loss in 2020 (vs 14M in 2019)
  - throw03172019 5y ago
    Quarantine / stay at home orders == time to learn a new language
    - vmception 5y ago
      Oh yeah, covid projects I bet a lot of people wont unsubscribe and they will offset it with their normal growth
  - jgalt212 5y ago
    I'm surprised they didn't do this in 20Q4 or 21Q1. it's going to be heard to sustain these growth numbers (revenue wise) as the economy opens up. They can pound non G-7 for user number growth, but that won't help with revenues (much).
Sindrome 5y ago
Always nice to see a Latino founder having an exit on here.
pacman2 5y ago
I found it too playful. I, by far, prefer Clozemaster https://www.clozemaster.com/ https://www.clozemaster.com/
- wraptile 5y ago
  I gave it a go and it's realy primitive. Just random sentence flashcards with no structure, learning material, spelling romantization and other features you'd expect. It does have audio but it's machine voice that goes extremely fast whixh you can only slow down when you answer the question. I'm constantly surprised by these new SASS projects popping up that are being outdone by open source Anki flashcards from 2010.
  - pacman2 5y ago
    I like that it is "primitive" It aims to answer the question, "What should I do after Duolingo?" It is based on https://tatoeba.org/en/ https://tatoeba.org/en/ "I'm constantly surprised by these new SASS projects popping up that are being outdone by open source Anki flashcards from 2010." Trust me, Anki can do very little for Chinese compared to clozemaster and the DuShu app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trescher.dushu&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trescher.d...
- w-m 5y ago
  This seems to suffer from the same problem that many of these learning apps have: it forces you to start as an absolute beginner, even if you aren't one. If you are on an intermediate or advanced level, this website could still be useful, but you first have to go through thousands of very easy sentences. It could very well gauge my level by upping the difficulty until I start making too many errors, and then taking it from there. But nope, by default it'll start with the 1000 most common words, which has zero learning effect, and is mostly annoying and boring.
41209 5y ago
On one hand, I like the general idea of Duolingo. But for Asian languages it's worse than useless. You're never taught grammatical rules, it's like you might learn a couple of random words. Far better specialized apps exist for both Korean and Chinese ( Hello Chinese is my favorite).
- trainsplanes 5y ago
  And oftentimes what it "teaches" is outright wrong. I've seen a good number of posts of people having fun with Duolingo in their native language and picking apart the mistakes.
- emsy 5y ago
  You don’t need to. Read up on the grammar if you encounter an odd construct or as a refresher, but remembering grammar rules is useless (And I say this as someone who can cite most of the grammar rules for English and German). It’s better to expose yourself to a lot of language and etch the patterns in your brain. In fact, I think not explaining grammar sparks curiosity, which is much better for remembering the rules you really need to know.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    That is the approach Duolingo takes intentionally, I think some people assume it's just lack of content but their philosophy is "show don't tell"
  - reitzensteinm 5y ago
    Duolingo just doesn't have enough content for this, at least when I used it (2017). I did the whole tree, and could remember the correct answers to sentences I couldn't understand. German only clicked for me when I got a tutor who sat me down and started explaining the grammar.
    - emsy 5y ago
      I think the issue is that Duolingo just isn’t good for learning a language at all, just for learning vocabulary. For example, we learned the English conditionals in school. Never once in my life have I actively thought about how and which conditional to use (except for the exam of course, but that just shows how dumb testing languages is).
pyuser583 5y ago
I like to see educational apps that are also fun to use (and profitable)! I’m glad Duolingo made it this far. They’re probably doing more good than many of the FAANGs.
mynameisash 5y ago
Duolingo has a special place in my heart because it helped me bootstrap French from almost literally zero knowledge. I remember my first night learning on Duo, having gone through a few lessons and also starting to read « Harry Potter à l'école de Sorciers » painstakingly slowly. In about a year of very much part-time effort, I was able to start going to a local French Meetup which rocketed my comprehension. Now that I'm about ~B2 and able to get by when I go to la Francophonie, I occasionally toy with the idea of picking up another language. But I don't really consider using Duolingo as a great way to start. It seems it's had to reckon with how to turn a profit in lieu of their race-to-the-bottom of crowdsourced translations, which seems to have inevitably turned to ads. When my kids were using it for mostly entertainment purposes, it seemed that whatever efficacy it had may have plummeted. Maybe I'm wrong - I really did like it and I love the idea of it. It just doesn't seem to have fulfilled its promise.
vmurthy 5y ago
A few points that caught my eye: 1. They have ~5% conversion from free to paid which seems like the top end of freemium apps (Range seems to be 2-5%) [0] 2. The business model section is interesting if you want to learn about SaaS / freemium models 3. Their web price is actually more than the iOS/Android price (83.88 v/s 80) which is surprising given that iOS has a 30% tax [0]https://blog.hubspot.com/service/freemium https://blog.hubspot.com/service/freemium
- specialist 5y ago
  Possessing the business acumen of plankton, this Acquired.fm podcast episode helped me understand the origins of freemium, what's going on. https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/season-3-episode-10-tencent https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/season-3-episode-10-tencent
davidzweig 5y ago
..meanwhile, in Serbia.. we're woking on a continuation of 'Language Learning with Netflix' project. It's under development and buggy, check the 'Video Clips' tab for all-you-can-eat language exposure (TurtleTube is a better name). https://www.languagereactor.com/ https://www.languagereactor.com/ Next push: more content, languages, personalised buffet based on your known vocab and interests. Don't open too many videos, you'll knock over our translation server :). Need to move that over to a box with GPUs tomorrow. Need help making a mobile version of this btw.
kouteiheika 5y ago
(Everything that follows is my personal opinion.) I'm technically working on a competitor to Duolingo (for Japanese), so I'm definitely biased, but personally I'm a little sad with how much success they're having considering how bad their system is (for Japanese, can't comment on other languages, but I can't imagine it's a lot better?). There are a lot of considerably better options for learning Japanese (and I'm not even talking about my own app as it's still a huge work-in-progress), and yet for some reason I see posts from people using Duolingo on forums everyday. It's really popular. I make a point of trying out most of the apps/websites in this space (since it's always a good idea to see what others are doing better than you), and (to me) it's apparent that Duolingo is definitely on the bottom of the barrel when it comes to actually being an effective learning tool. It might be okay-ish for a total, 100% beginner, but it breaks down very very fast. I guess you don't need to have a good product as long as you have solid marketing, flashy UI and heavily gamify the process? That was somewhat eye opening for me.
- ummonk 5y ago
  Gamifying is an important feature though, as it makes it easier for students to maintain motivation to keep learning.
  - kouteiheika 5y ago
    Yeah, I agree. Even if a tool is effective if you can't motivate the user it's all for naught. I just wish that concentrating on this aspect wasn't so disproportionately rewarded by the market; after all an educational tool should primarily be judged by how effective it is in actually educating, and the "fun" factor should only be a bonus, where with the current state of affairs it kinda seems like it's the other way around.
    - Vinnl 5y ago
      But the point there kinda is that gamification is not a "fun" factor, it's what makes them more effective in actually educating. If you have the best learning strategy, but you don't actually stick to it, it won't help.
p2detar 5y ago
I had fun with Duolingo, but I can’t say it helped me learn anything. To me something is missing and the learning structure seems somewhat shallow. I’d not recommend it to someone that is serious about learning a new language.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  What might be missing for you is other input: do you read Wikipedia, watch the news, listen to the radio or anything like that in addition to Duolingo?
- moepstar 5y ago
  Yep, same experience here. Tried learning Spanish with it - ok, you get to learn a little vocabulary, but tough luck if you're trying to convey something other than what your cat is trying to do to your pants...
rongenre 5y ago
I studied German in college, and was just terrible at it: And because it was a class, the further behind I got, the worse my experience was. Standing in front of a class and sounding just.. obviously bad really hit me hard. I'm about a year and a half into daily Duolingo German: I'm not going to say I "get it", but I'm doing better at grokking the grammar and I'm further than I ever was in class. I'm a few months from being entirely done with their course. I'll be doing italki afterwards.
meow112012 5y ago
I had been a heavy Duolingo user and collected a great record until I had a crazy 2 days busy with some company work. Once I finished I recognized all my records were gone. I never use the app again =))
jimbob45 5y ago
For those looking to learn a language, 4chan (of all places) has a pretty good guide to the programs out there. https://4chanint.fandom.com/wiki/The_Official_/int/_How_to_Learn_A_Foreign_Language_Guide_Wiki https://4chanint.fandom.com/wiki/The_Official_/int/_How_to_L...
igeligel_dev 5y ago
I have used duolingo for like 6-12 months of learning Spanish and it helped me so much. I was in Mexico and could understand a bit what they were talking about on radio and just making connections with people because you could speak a bit of their language was great! And I think that's where duolingo shines. They do not want you to learn a language completely/perfectly but it's kind of a bootcamp for languages. And their way of learning is helping so many people. The streaks are probably the drug most people need to continue or grinding a topic. It really helps a lot of people because in general since the main population sucks at consistency. On top of that, their branding is also top notch with duo, and their user experience overall is just the best. Happy to see them IPOing soon.
ffggvv 5y ago
i know duo isn’t perfect. but i appreciate it because it’s the only language learning thing that’s gotten me to consistently do it everyday for over a year. anything else i couldn’t maintain the habit. obviously not going to fluent off but as a novice i do appreciate it.
wraptile 5y ago
There's an open source duolingo alternative Librelingo: https://github.com/kantord/LibreLingo https://github.com/kantord/LibreLingo Duolingo's material is basically crowd-sourced, why not contribute it to a _free_ community project instead?
- pingu2 5y ago
  This actually isn’t true anymore. They stopped the contributor program and started doing it in-house, or at least paying the contributors: https://blog.duolingo.com/ending-honoring-our-volunteer-contributor-program-2/ https://blog.duolingo.com/ending-honoring-our-volunteer-cont...
bbarn 5y ago
I quite like Duolingo at the start. They did an excellent technical presentation at one of the AWS events I attended, and I think they were doing some really innovative stuff. If I recall correctly, their original model was to have more advanced learners crowdsourcing translation services, similar to how CAPTCHA made money. I guess the problem with that model is not many people become advanced learners. Something has to support all of the free install, use for a week or two crowd, and I guess that's where the hearts system came in. Either way, they never supported the language I had to learn (Icelandic, few do) so I found another app/site that did.
ben_w 5y ago
Nearly 1800 day streak, often in the diamond league, mainly using it for German, Esperanto, Greek, Dutch, Spanish, and Arabic. The art style and animations which they’re so proud of are absolutely the worst part for me, made worse by the fact I can only disable the animations on iOS by going into system settings, Accessibility, and choosing “Reduce Motion”, which affects the entire device and still doesn’t fully eliminate them. (That said, I know I’m not normal and it may well be a good thing for their business even though I hate that part of it). This, along with several bugs that never got fixed and the fact that offline mode stopped being useful during the pandemic, is why I am no longer a subscriber. The language courses I’ve been doing are variable quality: When I finished their German course I tried a GCSE[0] paper from the previous year practice catalogue of the exam board, and found I would’ve gotten a B[1]. However, I would probably not pass a CEFR grade A1 exam[2] because even though it taught me a broad enough vocabulary for B1, it didn’t teach me to conjugate my verbs fluently. It feels like it’s doing a better job at teaching me Spanish, but I’ll only know if/when I finish that course. The Greek course feels much like the German course («τρώω» vs. «τρώει»? My conjugation sucks). The Arabic course… I’ve been trying for about nine months and I still don’t know the Arabic alphabet (really doesn’t help that Duo is using numerals 2 and 3 as stand-ins for letters that don’t have Latin alphabet correspondences, even if there is a Wikipedia page for it [3]). [0] UK high school finishing exam [1] The scale went from A* to G at the time, since then it has been ‘reformed’ to be numerical [2] A1 is noob level. The grades are A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2. B1 is what you need for citizenship, C2 is essentially “I can defend my PhD thesis without hesitation”. [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_chat_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_chat_alphabet
- thenoblesunfish 5y ago
  Such a fun website, but as you point out, it's optimized in many ways for complete beginners and children, who looove those animations. In that vein, I was sad when they removed the translation feature (which was their original plan for monetization) - that was fascinating and was how I reached maximum level very quickly in Italian.
debarshri 5y ago
Question for industry experts. Looking at the financial statement of Duolingo, they seem to have invested more in R&D than building the product (cost of revenue). Is that normal? Or I am interpreting it wrong?
domatic1 5y ago
Duolingo is just like a fun game to try to learn a language but at the end it doesn't help much, tinycards did help me more to learn vocabulary. Trying to learn Finnish and the first words you learn is velho (wizard) who the hell uses wizard ? it's not even a common word. And then it gets boring and repetitive.
kaycebasques 5y ago
Seems like a well-timed IPO to sell a slightly misleading company narrative. They're labeling themselves as a growth company yet I'm very skeptical that those 2020 numbers can be maintained. On the other hand, I did have a Duo Plus subscription for about a year (in 2020). It was my primary tool for learning Brazilian Portuguese, and when people are impressed with how much I understand, Duo has come up a few times. In other words they are achieving word-of-mouth growth. I do also think it's mostly an effective learning system (especially the Stories) but I did have 3 or 4 years of traditional Spanish education in school. If I didn't have that foundation I probably would not have got as far as I did. Also, Duo gets boring as hell after a year.
nivenkos 5y ago
Duolingo Plus is great value, but I feel like they need more advanced content to help build you up to watching TV series, etc. in your target language. Also the divergence between the mobile and web content is strange, the mobile app misses out a lot of the discussion forums and the grammatical tip pages. Also the web content is harder as you're forced to remember the words yourself rather than just arrange them in the right order. It's a great app, I just think they need a way to incorporate more grammar lessons / tips and cheatsheets, and more advanced media (videos with target language subtitles, etc.)
- dgellow 5y ago
  Took me years to realize grammar rules were available in the web platform (I didn't even know they had a web version!). Really a missed opportunity.
voisin 5y ago
Slightly off topic: any thoughts on learning multiple languages (related languages or not) at once with Duolingo versus focusing? Wondering if the multi-language approach would help see common structures and reinforce each independently or if it just amounts to a distraction.
dgellow 5y ago
Duolingo doesn't work at all for me, I learn to solve their mini-games without actually learning the language, even after spending a lot of time on it. For some reasons my brain get the information, as proven by the fact that I pass the exercises, but I'm not able to use it in a non-gamified context. Seems to be an issue with the method itself. Anki + an actual textbook + grammar reference is not fancy and requires a lot of time and commitment but I haven't found anything else that works.
baby 5y ago
I wouldn’t buy. I spent a lot of time learning german, chinese, romanian, spanish on duolingo and I just don’t think it’s a great system to learn. They definitely have the branding and the community that creates content though. If they pivot to better content, and invest in researching what are better ways to learn.

256 points by marc__1 5y ago

From prospectus -" For many, Duolingo has become synonymous with language learning: for example, on Google, people search the term “Duolingo” nine times more often than “learn Spanish.” I would imagine the sum of "Learn <any language>" would exceed searches for Duolingo - do they really think it has become genetic like Kleenex?

JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago
It seems inaccurate as well. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=duolingo,learn%20Spanish https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=duolingo,l... duolingo - 49, learn Spanish - 16 That's slightly over 3x, nowhere near 9x.
- BrianSenator 5y ago
  If you change from US-only to worldwide, you roughly get their figure.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago
    I'd be curious how much of their revenue is ex-US. It's an interesting stat, but if we've expanded the cohort massively to include a bunch of exclusively free users, then it's less so.
  - poopypoopington 5y ago
    Which itself is misleading because people searching in non-English languages will search "duolingo" while they will not search "learn Spanish" but instead their language's equivalent
  - zild3d 5y ago
    Comparing worldwide isn't really a fair comparison if Google doesn't internationalize the trends "Learn spanish" is "impara lo spagnolo" in italian "Duolingo" is "Duolingo" in every language https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=duolingo,learn%20Spanish,impara%20lo%20spagnolo https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=duolingo,learn%20...
    - tinfoilheadsock 5y ago
      this guy i18ns
bberenberg 5y ago
The isn't deceptive because "Learn <any language>" vs Duolingo. It is deceptive because they offer many languages, so it's really "Learn <any and all languages Duolingo supports>" vs Duolingo.
purple_ferret 5y ago
considering how much rosetta stone held the same position and quickly fell out of favor, I wonder how much of a selling point it is.
- gtaylor 5y ago
  What happened to them?

guerrilla 5y ago

Any predictions as to what kind of changes to the app this could lead to?

NtochkaNzvanova 5y ago
Pressure to maintain revenue growth will lead them further down the path they've already been on for a while (long-time non-paid Duolingo user here): longer, more frequent, and more annoying ads, and more frequent upgrade calls-to-action. I swear there are some days when I'll do ten lessons and see the exact same upgrade ad after every single one.
- abecedarius 5y ago
  It seems like a trap they dug for themselves: optimize the drilling process for engagement instead of speed of learning, maximize eyeballs, advertise -- and that sours me on the paid upgrade, because the drilling is such a grind. I'd happily pay if the instruction felt efficient.
bombcar 5y ago
You haven’t purchased Duolingo stock today. You know what happens next.

Jakobeha 5y ago

I use Duolingo to learn Spanish. It's very simple but the streak system has kept me making slow progress. I've only gotten to "Checkpoint 3" (of 7) but it seems to be working well - I don't speak fluent but I can usually read signs etc. in Spanish and actually understand them. The main issue I can see them facing is: it's very simple, so easy to clone. And Duo has its flaws, so I wouldn't be surprised if of those clones are a lot better. I like Duo, I use it now, but I could switch to another service in 1 second.

vmception 5y ago
In the Risk Factors section > The online language learning industry is highly competitive, with low switching costs and a consistent stream of new products and entrants, and innovation by our competitors may disrupt our business. I don't personally like Duolingo. Formal education has been better for me, with languages. Both Duolingo, Memrise and Rosetta Stone neglect to tell you why any language rule exists or what contexts its used in and just procedurally generate gendered ways to ask for an Apple for 50 levels of lessons, pretending like rote memorization and classical conditioning is useful. I would say that it is not, context is very important. Enough people believe this is useful, like you, you want to read signs. This won't help you notice that the entire color spectrum can be wildly different in different languages and cultures, or that you sound like you used Google Translate and everyone will look at you weird because they speak in a trendy way. As for a company, its just ARR. Enough people will pay for it and use a subscription, that's good enough.
- Jakobeha 5y ago
  I should've mentioned that I actually took Spanish classes a few years before Duolingo. Those classes taught me the grammar and why the rules exist, but I didn't memorize many words (or I forgot) and I had serious trouble understanding actual Spanish speakers. Duolingo "teaches" alternate tenses weirdly and IMO too late. But it does well for memorizing words, and it has people speaking with actual Spanish accents and forces you to understand them. So it's particularly helpful for me.
  - 5y ago

lhorie 5y ago

Interesting timing. Duolingo is a bit like Zoom in the sense that they got insane growth last year due to everyone being stuck at home. That should make the financial numbers look exceptionally good for IPO.

dheera 5y ago
But now everyone is itching to travel and so maybe they'll continue the insane growth as people learn languages of the places they want to travel to.
vmurthy 5y ago
A few things about the timing in addition to lockdown induced growth :) 1. They raised their Series A in 2011 and raised a few rounds between 2012-2015 [0]. VCs usually have a time horizon of 5-7 years so this might be another reason. 2. Interest rates continue to be low (not that this is news) so stock markets might be more receptive. All in all , a great result if it lists at ~4 or 5 billion$ given that their latest valuation seems to be about $2.2 billion [1] [0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/duolingo/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/duolingo/company_fin... [1]https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/18/language-learning-app-duolingo-confirms-it-has-raised-35m-on-a-2-4b-valuation/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/18/language-learning-app-duol...

umvi 5y ago

I tried so hard to get into Duolingo but I just felt like I was making progress so slowly. I much prefer italki. It's a lot more expensive than Duolingo, but worth it IMO to actually talk to a native speaker regularly.

rememberlenny 5y ago
Cool to see italki mentioned here. italki.com was the first startup job I got out of college over 8 years ago in Shanghai, and where I met my current cofounder.
- HKH2 5y ago
  I used to use it to get people's Skype addresses and do p2p learning. It seems they've cracked down on that a lot.

dlevine 5y ago

I worked all the way through Duolingo's Mandarin curriculum a couple of years back (after having basic knowledge from studying on another paid site). I can say that it was definitely fun, and it was easy to study every day. The downside was that I was still at a pretty basic level when I finished their curriculum. Logged on just now, and they haven't added any new content since I finished. For people who just want to learn a few words of a foreign language and have fun while I'm doing it, Duolingo is great. And I'm sure that the market is huge.

DantesKite 5y ago
I imagine the market for people wanting to learn English is even higher.
- HKH2 5y ago
  Much higher. When I last checked, it was much easier for an English speaker to find a Mandarin penpal than the other way around.
HKH2 5y ago
There are plenty of good Mandarin decks on Anki, especially ones with sentences/idioms. (You just have to be careful with the Pinyin at times as it may be automatically generated and some characters have more than one sound/tone.)
- Apfel 5y ago
  Agree strongly with this. The Spoonfed Chinese deck is so good that it's worth actually paying for. I think it's only $3 or so now.
throwaway09223 5y ago
I'm also working through their Mandarin and I'm stunned they only offer simplified. It would be so easy to implement traditional characters. It's fun and free, which is nice, but it's really nowhere near as good as other paid platforms.

anw 5y ago

I really like Duolingo. It's not my favorite way of learning a language§, but they do a good job of pounding vocabulary into your head over and over. I will never forget that jeruk is "orange" in Indonesian. However, taken from "Risk Factors" on this S-1: > •users feel that their experience is diminished as a result of the decisions we make with respect to the frequency, prominence, format, size and quality of ads that we display; Duolingo has a big problem with both their ads and how they promote their Plus plan. (I hope to never see an owl flying through space again) Primarily, the quality of the ads I see are those stupid fish games or the "pull this pin to drop lava on the knight" that you see advertised on Facebook. I'm sure they're making money off of views, especially since you can't proceed in your lesson until you watch the video, but it cheapens the brand name of Duolingo (at least for me). If they had ads for anything language, travel, or even food related, it would feel more on par with their branding. But so many other dollar grab apps do the same thing [regarding those kinds of video ads] that it feels like I'm just looking at another cheap app. Secondly, how they promote their Plus plan. You are limited in how long you can access their platform by how many hearts you have. Miss enough questions, your hearts run out. Run out of hearts, you're restricted from proceeding further in your studies. You must buy hearts to stay on their platform. This feels counter intuitive, as you are now kicking users off of your platform and lose the ability to sway them towards other things you have to offer. I have found that between carrot and stick approaches, it is usually better to use a carrot where you can. § - For my style of learning, I've found Pimsleur to be one of the better approaches. Breaking sentences into phrases, phrases into words, and down words into syllables really helps me grasp the langauge more, especially with the context that goes around in the "story".

deleted 5y ago
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broof 5y ago
Duolingos website actually has different features (and less/no ads for the mobile version of the website). On iPhone you can export the website itself to your home screen and it’s essentially an ad free version of the app with better features. I found it to be way more enjoyable this way

Semaphor 5y ago

My wife used Duolingo to get most of the way to A1 levels (she then did some free Deutsche Welle stuff in preparation for the exam, but that was it). And for that, it’s good: Getting the basics of a language.

purple_ferret 5y ago

I remember looking into applying to them but back in the day they claimed they only hired Phds. Which is interesting because their app or its teaching style never turned out all that exceptional

HKH2 5y ago
Yes it's far too repetitive for more ambitious learners. Also, all the delays/animations are really bothersome. If you set it up well, learning has its own rewards, so you needn't focus so much on gamification.
wraptile 5y ago
Reading material is laughably bad and as far as I remember is not even available in the mobile app (or at least was for the longest time). So people are just randomly guessing grammar rules and forums are constantly spammed with the same explanations.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

I've personally found duolingo to be a poor way to learn a language. It gets none of the nuances right and is mostly just for entry level vocab. My favorite method is this guys using anki: http://brianjx.altervista.org/GermanC2exam.html http://brianjx.altervista.org/GermanC2exam.html His stories on German and Italian are fascinating reads because he was in his later years in life when he learned it! It's just a general nod to remember, you're never too old to learn!

mpva 5y ago

How do we buy into Duoloingo stocks?

haliskerbas 5y ago
They filed for IPO. If this goes through, the stock will likely be listed on some stock exchange, and a stock broker will facilitate your purchase of them.
- mpva 5y ago
  Thank you.

cletus 5y ago

So I did Spanish on Duolingo for awhile a few years ago, as in the whole way down the tree. In the end I wasn't really satisfied, for several reasons: 1. Honestly I'm not sure I remember any of it. I found the retention to be pretty terrible. Maybe that's just me; 2. Answers were often obvious with no knowledge of the material. For example, if something is a question and only one of the answers is a question then that's your answer. This is a pretty common problem with tests I find. Test-taking is a skill you can learn, which is useful... for passing tests. Back in college I can remember getting 80%+ in French multiple choice tests knowing nothing about French. Here have been some of my go tos over the years: - With multiple choices where answers are randomly distributed you'll find each answer letter occurs just about as often. So if you have 100 questions with 4 options each but only have 16/90 As, there's a good chance a lot of the remaining answers are A. Yes, test preparers can assign them uneven weights to defeat this. My experience was almost no one did; - One question can give you the answer to a completely unrelated question. So in a language test you may need to conjugate a verb and be unsure about it but another question will have that verb conjugated in a sentence; - So many times I've seen tests where two or more questions are based on the same underlying piece of knowledge that could be one of two things. You answer one question one way and the other one the other so you will get 1 of them right. It's usually better than gambling, which may mean 0. But you may also need to get lucky in which case it might be better to shoot for 2 risking 0 instead. Honestly I think it's tests like these that taught me a lot about managing probability. - Lastly, and this one may seem obvious but it's not for some reason: answer every question no matter how dumb your answer may seem. If it's a freeform answer you may get partial marks for something. It costs you nothing to try. I've occasionally seen multiple choice tests that penalize you for a wrong answer, which requires altering the strategy. I think I've seen this twice, ever, however. But I digress... 3. Likewise where you had to pick words to fill out a sentence, your choices were so limited the answer tended to be obvious. 4. Around that time Duolingo started the pressure to monetize by adding the hearts system, which basically penalized you for getting anything wrong such that you couldn't continue if you made enough errors. This then created the mental barrier of not wanting to get something wrong and googling it to make sure. Just the act of worrying about it was distraction enough; 5. I found the lesson structure to be haphazard, like the topics had pretty random selections of words. I feel like it would've been better if they'd focused on the most common words and phrases used conversationally.

pnathan 5y ago

Good for them. I wish it was available when I was taking classes in college. I wish they went deeper in the grammar and explanatory material - the boring things that make a language work. :-}

vmception 5y ago

tl;dr on their financials and growth?

umeshunni 5y ago
162M revenue in 2020 (vs 71M in 2019) 15M loss in 2020 (vs 14M in 2019)
- throw03172019 5y ago
  Quarantine / stay at home orders == time to learn a new language
  - vmception 5y ago
    Oh yeah, covid projects I bet a lot of people wont unsubscribe and they will offset it with their normal growth
- jgalt212 5y ago
  I'm surprised they didn't do this in 20Q4 or 21Q1. it's going to be heard to sustain these growth numbers (revenue wise) as the economy opens up. They can pound non G-7 for user number growth, but that won't help with revenues (much).

Sindrome 5y ago

Always nice to see a Latino founder having an exit on here.

pacman2 5y ago

I found it too playful. I, by far, prefer Clozemaster https://www.clozemaster.com/ https://www.clozemaster.com/

wraptile 5y ago
I gave it a go and it's realy primitive. Just random sentence flashcards with no structure, learning material, spelling romantization and other features you'd expect. It does have audio but it's machine voice that goes extremely fast whixh you can only slow down when you answer the question. I'm constantly surprised by these new SASS projects popping up that are being outdone by open source Anki flashcards from 2010.
- pacman2 5y ago
  I like that it is "primitive" It aims to answer the question, "What should I do after Duolingo?" It is based on https://tatoeba.org/en/ https://tatoeba.org/en/ "I'm constantly surprised by these new SASS projects popping up that are being outdone by open source Anki flashcards from 2010." Trust me, Anki can do very little for Chinese compared to clozemaster and the DuShu app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trescher.dushu&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trescher.d...
w-m 5y ago
This seems to suffer from the same problem that many of these learning apps have: it forces you to start as an absolute beginner, even if you aren't one. If you are on an intermediate or advanced level, this website could still be useful, but you first have to go through thousands of very easy sentences. It could very well gauge my level by upping the difficulty until I start making too many errors, and then taking it from there. But nope, by default it'll start with the 1000 most common words, which has zero learning effect, and is mostly annoying and boring.

41209 5y ago

On one hand, I like the general idea of Duolingo. But for Asian languages it's worse than useless. You're never taught grammatical rules, it's like you might learn a couple of random words. Far better specialized apps exist for both Korean and Chinese ( Hello Chinese is my favorite).

trainsplanes 5y ago
And oftentimes what it "teaches" is outright wrong. I've seen a good number of posts of people having fun with Duolingo in their native language and picking apart the mistakes.
emsy 5y ago
You don’t need to. Read up on the grammar if you encounter an odd construct or as a refresher, but remembering grammar rules is useless (And I say this as someone who can cite most of the grammar rules for English and German). It’s better to expose yourself to a lot of language and etch the patterns in your brain. In fact, I think not explaining grammar sparks curiosity, which is much better for remembering the rules you really need to know.
- ehnto 5y ago
  That is the approach Duolingo takes intentionally, I think some people assume it's just lack of content but their philosophy is "show don't tell"
- reitzensteinm 5y ago
  Duolingo just doesn't have enough content for this, at least when I used it (2017). I did the whole tree, and could remember the correct answers to sentences I couldn't understand. German only clicked for me when I got a tutor who sat me down and started explaining the grammar.
  - emsy 5y ago
    I think the issue is that Duolingo just isn’t good for learning a language at all, just for learning vocabulary. For example, we learned the English conditionals in school. Never once in my life have I actively thought about how and which conditional to use (except for the exam of course, but that just shows how dumb testing languages is).

pyuser583 5y ago

I like to see educational apps that are also fun to use (and profitable)! I’m glad Duolingo made it this far. They’re probably doing more good than many of the FAANGs.

mynameisash 5y ago

Duolingo has a special place in my heart because it helped me bootstrap French from almost literally zero knowledge. I remember my first night learning on Duo, having gone through a few lessons and also starting to read « Harry Potter à l'école de Sorciers » painstakingly slowly. In about a year of very much part-time effort, I was able to start going to a local French Meetup which rocketed my comprehension. Now that I'm about ~B2 and able to get by when I go to la Francophonie, I occasionally toy with the idea of picking up another language. But I don't really consider using Duolingo as a great way to start. It seems it's had to reckon with how to turn a profit in lieu of their race-to-the-bottom of crowdsourced translations, which seems to have inevitably turned to ads. When my kids were using it for mostly entertainment purposes, it seemed that whatever efficacy it had may have plummeted. Maybe I'm wrong - I really did like it and I love the idea of it. It just doesn't seem to have fulfilled its promise.

vmurthy 5y ago

A few points that caught my eye: 1. They have ~5% conversion from free to paid which seems like the top end of freemium apps (Range seems to be 2-5%) [0] 2. The business model section is interesting if you want to learn about SaaS / freemium models 3. Their web price is actually more than the iOS/Android price (83.88 v/s 80) which is surprising given that iOS has a 30% tax [0]https://blog.hubspot.com/service/freemium https://blog.hubspot.com/service/freemium

specialist 5y ago
Possessing the business acumen of plankton, this Acquired.fm podcast episode helped me understand the origins of freemium, what's going on. https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/season-3-episode-10-tencent https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/season-3-episode-10-tencent

davidzweig 5y ago

..meanwhile, in Serbia.. we're woking on a continuation of 'Language Learning with Netflix' project. It's under development and buggy, check the 'Video Clips' tab for all-you-can-eat language exposure (TurtleTube is a better name). https://www.languagereactor.com/ https://www.languagereactor.com/ Next push: more content, languages, personalised buffet based on your known vocab and interests. Don't open too many videos, you'll knock over our translation server :). Need to move that over to a box with GPUs tomorrow. Need help making a mobile version of this btw.

kouteiheika 5y ago

(Everything that follows is my personal opinion.) I'm technically working on a competitor to Duolingo (for Japanese), so I'm definitely biased, but personally I'm a little sad with how much success they're having considering how bad their system is (for Japanese, can't comment on other languages, but I can't imagine it's a lot better?). There are a lot of considerably better options for learning Japanese (and I'm not even talking about my own app as it's still a huge work-in-progress), and yet for some reason I see posts from people using Duolingo on forums everyday. It's really popular. I make a point of trying out most of the apps/websites in this space (since it's always a good idea to see what others are doing better than you), and (to me) it's apparent that Duolingo is definitely on the bottom of the barrel when it comes to actually being an effective learning tool. It might be okay-ish for a total, 100% beginner, but it breaks down very very fast. I guess you don't need to have a good product as long as you have solid marketing, flashy UI and heavily gamify the process? That was somewhat eye opening for me.

ummonk 5y ago
Gamifying is an important feature though, as it makes it easier for students to maintain motivation to keep learning.
- kouteiheika 5y ago
  Yeah, I agree. Even if a tool is effective if you can't motivate the user it's all for naught. I just wish that concentrating on this aspect wasn't so disproportionately rewarded by the market; after all an educational tool should primarily be judged by how effective it is in actually educating, and the "fun" factor should only be a bonus, where with the current state of affairs it kinda seems like it's the other way around.
  - Vinnl 5y ago
    But the point there kinda is that gamification is not a "fun" factor, it's what makes them more effective in actually educating. If you have the best learning strategy, but you don't actually stick to it, it won't help.

p2detar 5y ago

I had fun with Duolingo, but I can’t say it helped me learn anything. To me something is missing and the learning structure seems somewhat shallow. I’d not recommend it to someone that is serious about learning a new language.

guerrilla 5y ago
What might be missing for you is other input: do you read Wikipedia, watch the news, listen to the radio or anything like that in addition to Duolingo?
moepstar 5y ago
Yep, same experience here. Tried learning Spanish with it - ok, you get to learn a little vocabulary, but tough luck if you're trying to convey something other than what your cat is trying to do to your pants...

rongenre 5y ago

I studied German in college, and was just terrible at it: And because it was a class, the further behind I got, the worse my experience was. Standing in front of a class and sounding just.. obviously bad really hit me hard. I'm about a year and a half into daily Duolingo German: I'm not going to say I "get it", but I'm doing better at grokking the grammar and I'm further than I ever was in class. I'm a few months from being entirely done with their course. I'll be doing italki afterwards.

meow112012 5y ago

I had been a heavy Duolingo user and collected a great record until I had a crazy 2 days busy with some company work. Once I finished I recognized all my records were gone. I never use the app again =))

jimbob45 5y ago

For those looking to learn a language, 4chan (of all places) has a pretty good guide to the programs out there. https://4chanint.fandom.com/wiki/The_Official_/int/_How_to_Learn_A_Foreign_Language_Guide_Wiki https://4chanint.fandom.com/wiki/The_Official_/int/_How_to_L...

igeligel_dev 5y ago

I have used duolingo for like 6-12 months of learning Spanish and it helped me so much. I was in Mexico and could understand a bit what they were talking about on radio and just making connections with people because you could speak a bit of their language was great! And I think that's where duolingo shines. They do not want you to learn a language completely/perfectly but it's kind of a bootcamp for languages. And their way of learning is helping so many people. The streaks are probably the drug most people need to continue or grinding a topic. It really helps a lot of people because in general since the main population sucks at consistency. On top of that, their branding is also top notch with duo, and their user experience overall is just the best. Happy to see them IPOing soon.

ffggvv 5y ago

i know duo isn’t perfect. but i appreciate it because it’s the only language learning thing that’s gotten me to consistently do it everyday for over a year. anything else i couldn’t maintain the habit. obviously not going to fluent off but as a novice i do appreciate it.

wraptile 5y ago

There's an open source duolingo alternative Librelingo: https://github.com/kantord/LibreLingo https://github.com/kantord/LibreLingo Duolingo's material is basically crowd-sourced, why not contribute it to a _free_ community project instead?

pingu2 5y ago
This actually isn’t true anymore. They stopped the contributor program and started doing it in-house, or at least paying the contributors: https://blog.duolingo.com/ending-honoring-our-volunteer-contributor-program-2/ https://blog.duolingo.com/ending-honoring-our-volunteer-cont...

bbarn 5y ago

I quite like Duolingo at the start. They did an excellent technical presentation at one of the AWS events I attended, and I think they were doing some really innovative stuff. If I recall correctly, their original model was to have more advanced learners crowdsourcing translation services, similar to how CAPTCHA made money. I guess the problem with that model is not many people become advanced learners. Something has to support all of the free install, use for a week or two crowd, and I guess that's where the hearts system came in. Either way, they never supported the language I had to learn (Icelandic, few do) so I found another app/site that did.

ben_w 5y ago

Nearly 1800 day streak, often in the diamond league, mainly using it for German, Esperanto, Greek, Dutch, Spanish, and Arabic. The art style and animations which they’re so proud of are absolutely the worst part for me, made worse by the fact I can only disable the animations on iOS by going into system settings, Accessibility, and choosing “Reduce Motion”, which affects the entire device and still doesn’t fully eliminate them. (That said, I know I’m not normal and it may well be a good thing for their business even though I hate that part of it). This, along with several bugs that never got fixed and the fact that offline mode stopped being useful during the pandemic, is why I am no longer a subscriber. The language courses I’ve been doing are variable quality: When I finished their German course I tried a GCSE[0] paper from the previous year practice catalogue of the exam board, and found I would’ve gotten a B[1]. However, I would probably not pass a CEFR grade A1 exam[2] because even though it taught me a broad enough vocabulary for B1, it didn’t teach me to conjugate my verbs fluently. It feels like it’s doing a better job at teaching me Spanish, but I’ll only know if/when I finish that course. The Greek course feels much like the German course («τρώω» vs. «τρώει»? My conjugation sucks). The Arabic course… I’ve been trying for about nine months and I still don’t know the Arabic alphabet (really doesn’t help that Duo is using numerals 2 and 3 as stand-ins for letters that don’t have Latin alphabet correspondences, even if there is a Wikipedia page for it [3]). [0] UK high school finishing exam [1] The scale went from A* to G at the time, since then it has been ‘reformed’ to be numerical [2] A1 is noob level. The grades are A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2. B1 is what you need for citizenship, C2 is essentially “I can defend my PhD thesis without hesitation”. [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_chat_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_chat_alphabet

thenoblesunfish 5y ago
Such a fun website, but as you point out, it's optimized in many ways for complete beginners and children, who looove those animations. In that vein, I was sad when they removed the translation feature (which was their original plan for monetization) - that was fascinating and was how I reached maximum level very quickly in Italian.

debarshri 5y ago

Question for industry experts. Looking at the financial statement of Duolingo, they seem to have invested more in R&D than building the product (cost of revenue). Is that normal? Or I am interpreting it wrong?

domatic1 5y ago

Duolingo is just like a fun game to try to learn a language but at the end it doesn't help much, tinycards did help me more to learn vocabulary. Trying to learn Finnish and the first words you learn is velho (wizard) who the hell uses wizard ? it's not even a common word. And then it gets boring and repetitive.

kaycebasques 5y ago

Seems like a well-timed IPO to sell a slightly misleading company narrative. They're labeling themselves as a growth company yet I'm very skeptical that those 2020 numbers can be maintained. On the other hand, I did have a Duo Plus subscription for about a year (in 2020). It was my primary tool for learning Brazilian Portuguese, and when people are impressed with how much I understand, Duo has come up a few times. In other words they are achieving word-of-mouth growth. I do also think it's mostly an effective learning system (especially the Stories) but I did have 3 or 4 years of traditional Spanish education in school. If I didn't have that foundation I probably would not have got as far as I did. Also, Duo gets boring as hell after a year.

nivenkos 5y ago

Duolingo Plus is great value, but I feel like they need more advanced content to help build you up to watching TV series, etc. in your target language. Also the divergence between the mobile and web content is strange, the mobile app misses out a lot of the discussion forums and the grammatical tip pages. Also the web content is harder as you're forced to remember the words yourself rather than just arrange them in the right order. It's a great app, I just think they need a way to incorporate more grammar lessons / tips and cheatsheets, and more advanced media (videos with target language subtitles, etc.)

dgellow 5y ago
Took me years to realize grammar rules were available in the web platform (I didn't even know they had a web version!). Really a missed opportunity.

voisin 5y ago

Slightly off topic: any thoughts on learning multiple languages (related languages or not) at once with Duolingo versus focusing? Wondering if the multi-language approach would help see common structures and reinforce each independently or if it just amounts to a distraction.

dgellow 5y ago

Duolingo doesn't work at all for me, I learn to solve their mini-games without actually learning the language, even after spending a lot of time on it. For some reasons my brain get the information, as proven by the fact that I pass the exercises, but I'm not able to use it in a non-gamified context. Seems to be an issue with the method itself. Anki + an actual textbook + grammar reference is not fancy and requires a lot of time and commitment but I haven't found anything else that works.

baby 5y ago

I wouldn’t buy. I spent a lot of time learning german, chinese, romanian, spanish on duolingo and I just don’t think it’s a great system to learn. They definitely have the branding and the community that creates content though. If they pivot to better content, and invest in researching what are better ways to learn.