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Ugh. You can just feel the management layers in this. Management wants to do something with AI. It's so hot right now. Your product guy got an idea for a cool
by CobrastanJorji 4y ago
Ugh. You can just feel the management layers in this.
Management wants to do something with AI. It's so hot right now. Your product guy got an idea for a cool new feature. Tests show that users actually like it. It's helpful. Great.
But now you need to explain how you made Duolingo money. First idea, your product has a paid tier, add it as a feature to the paid tier too boost paid user retention and new signups. Great, metrics! But you're pretty sure that, while customers do like this when you ask, you're probably not moving the needle. What to do? Well, you're a mobile game company, focus on what always works: go after the whales.
Now your product is an exclusive EVEN HIGHER tier. Get the art guy to make, like, an Amex Black Card but for the Owl. Make him do a superhero landing or something. Run a bunch of ads at the paid users to convince them that they'd totally be helped by this. They'll be focused on the users who already pay Duolingo money, so those are perfect advertising targets. And you'll be able to show real dollars that your feature is pulling in. Hooray! That VP spot is as good as yours, I bet!
- skeaker 4y agoI mean, sure, that's more or less how a company operates. You make a new product, you charge for it, you advertise it. What's the big issue? This all seems pretty standard.
- pokpokpok 4y agothe product bad
- mgiannopoulos 4y agoHave you tried this already? Please share more of your experience
- aroo 4y agoconsidering that ChatGPT is going to run on GPT-4 and is more or less free, why would someone use this paid feature instead of talking to ChatGPT?
- mgiannopoulos 4y agoGPT-4 on ChatGPT is currently only available for paying users.
- DrammBA 4y ago> What's the big issue? This all seems pretty standard I would say this one feels more later stage capitalism than usual, all it's missing is some tiktok influesters hyping it up.
- babyshake 4y agoThe real late stage capitalism move is Duolingo building a bank into their app.
- __d 4y agoC'mon, let's make lingots (the Duo reward system) into a cryptocurrency. Reimplement the service such that people doing language lessons are the proof of work, and miners (learners) get lingots as their reward.
- MrOwnPut 4y agoHonestly, being able to build a company that creates livelihoods while simultaneously teaching people foreign languages goes against many of the historical and modern definitions of "late stage capitalism". But I assume you're just using the super modern catch-all fad term of late stage capitalism that means nothing. Also, from TFA: "Duolingo Max is available to everyone"
- jeron 4y agoDuolingo is the worst on TikTok. One of the most obnoxious accounts
- NoPicklez 4y agoHow dare you try to make money to pay your employees
- pmoriarty 4y agoTheir motivation to make money is to pay their employees?
- textninja 4y agos/to pay/and pay/ but the point stands doesn’t it?
- NoPicklez 4y agoIt's a fairly important motivator if you want a business
- wahnfrieden 4y agoBusinesses exist to minimize variable costs. Variable cost is not a motivator for owners and investors. It’s a cost.
- TheDong 4y agoYup. Having and paying employees is a good that deflects from all criticism of price. When I doubled prices in my coffee shop, at first people were unhappy, but as soon as I told them I threw out the coffee grinding machine and replaced it with 3 new jobs of "hand-grinders", people were overjoyed and immediately stopped criticizing the price increase. I was just making money to pay employees afterall. When I had to raise prices again because all the hand-coffee-grinder employees suffered severe medical injuries, everyone understood that too. ..... My point, obviously, is that hiring a bunch of employees to design ways to trick people into clicking more ads (sorry, ahem, improving user engagement) doesn't mean that the company making money is suddenly an obvious and unquestionable good that can be used as a shield from other criticism
- aleph_minus_one 4y ago> You make a new product, you charge for it, you advertise it. What's the big issue? The issue is: from beginning on and for a long time Duolingo advertised with "Learn a language for free. Forever." :-(
- hndamien 4y agoYou can still learn a language for free with Duo Lingo.
- csomar 4y agoNo. I got duped into that too. After a few sessions they required payment.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rezaprima 4y agoWeird, I haven't paid for quite some time
- matheusmoreira 4y agoI never had to pay for Duolingo. I decided to pay because I wanted to. It's legitimately teaching me a new language and I'm pretty happy with it.
- ossusermivami 4y agonot at all, they are pushy about you taking a premium sub but you can still learn for free...
- DennisAleynikov 4y agowhat did you click in duolingo that required payment?
- bspammer 4y agoDid you run out of hearts? Those recharge over time, you don’t need to pay.
- d23 4y agoAgreed. The main two questions, in my mind: is this actually a good product experience, and are they charging a fair price.
- bayesian_horse 4y agoI think they can't make it free (or with their old subscription model) because OpenAI APIs are pricey. It would quickly eat up whatever money they can generate. They also hope their product is getting THAT much better you want to pay.
- chrisfosterelli 4y agoIn fairness to duolingo, nearly everything duolingo does is like this. They are extremely metric and process driven (for better and worse of actual users).
- CobrastanJorji 4y agoI can tell because when I tried to figure out the cost of the existing Super Duolingo, I was unable to do so. The https://www.duolingo.com/super https://www.duolingo.com/super page gives me lots of information about tiers and benefits but never mentions a cost. I'm sure telling you hurt metrics. Fuck those guys.
- tempest_ 4y agoIf you are signed it the cost appears in the comparison chart. For reference it is 10$ CAD per month or the Family option which is 12.50 CAD per month. I assume they do regional price adjustments though.
- fernly 4y agoThank you. I too wasted a good five minutes trying to find out what any tier would cost, and failed. I wonder if the USD prices are different from the CAD ones?
- izolate 4y agoI'd be very interested to know exactly what metrics allow them to ignore the fact that their most-recent app redesign has been, from what I can tell, unanimously disliked and shown to frustrate their userbase.
- chrisfosterelli 4y agoThis is exactly the example I was thinking of. There is a Reddit AMA where a user asks why they keep it even though it's universally disliked and the CEO essentially says "I hear you but DAU is higher on the redesign". I think it's an example where metrics are taken too far. Yes, better DAU is good, but if you are alienating 100% of your power users and getting more engagement from your short-term, new signup users that's going to look great for a few quarters but kill your app over the long term as the community experts start telling everyone they used to recommend Duolingo to to go use something else.
- vasco 4y agoMaking features without any monetization strategy and abandoning afterwards because you can't even justify the salaries of the devs working on it is way better? It's like you're mad at modern product development, ignoring the reasons why.
- threatripper 4y agoMaking a monetization strategy without understanding the feature is just as useless. If it's new you have to build it in order to understand it. You need to invest some time into the features first. If it doesn't stick then discard it early or iterate on it and use the information gained on building better features.
- dyno12345 4y agowhen will the world be ready for open source prompt engineering workflows?
- jonas21 4y agoThese are game-changing improvements to language learning, things that previously you'd only get by going to a human language tutor. And the first thing that comes to mind is to complain about them adding a pricing tier? I know HN tends to be cynical, but really?
- recuter 4y agoIt was literally just announced hours ago and already the game is changed. Tout le jeu, jamais le même, nous parlons couramment maintenant grâce au brillant hibou d'action. A légpárnásom tele van angolnákkal!
- Kailhus 4y agoPardon?
- recuter 4y agoAfter just 5 hours on a Duolingo Max I have become fluent at useful everyday language needs, behold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grA5XmBRC6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grA5XmBRC6g
- DangitBobby 4y agoSay what you mean instead of hiding behind low-effort sarcasm.
- ben_w 4y agoDe ezt rosszul fordították magyarból, nem fordították rosszul franciára. Szerintem ez a vígjáték megfelelőbb: https://youtu.be/mh_ePgI4n3Y https://youtu.be/mh_ePgI4n3Y ;)
- recuter 4y agoNevettem. Sajnos bebizonyosodott, hogy errefelé nem nézzük jó szemmel az alacsony erőfeszítést igénylő szarkazmust. Hajlandó vagyok figyelmen kívül hagyni a törvényszegést a havi Duolingo Max előfizetés szokásos megvesztegetéséért.
- no_butterscotch 4y agoI use Duolingo, but only free. They've given me free access to their super tier twice now for a few days or a week each time. I assume at some point they'll do the same to try to give me a taste of this new product and maybe it'll be good? Either way I'll wait and see for a free option. I understand your skepticism. But I hope it ends up being a fun (and importantly: effective!) new way to learn.
- NoPicklez 4y agoGreat, you've just boiled down how online services are making money from their applications. Company x online uses x popular tactics for making money off of the services they provide, shock. It's a bit of a boring story really. Yes AI is 'so hot right now' so why not leverage it? It's hot for a reason and maybe just maybe, it is actually beneficial to the product you provide, so why wouldn't you implement it. I can see another angle if they didn't where people would start to say Duolingo is starting to become dated, due to lack of features such as AI/ML.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]