29 ms·

Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

347 points by shacker 11y ago

jasondc 11y ago
Duolingo is the best learning platform I've ever used. Even better than Khan Academy (and Khan Academy is really really good). Happy to see them doing so well!
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  Totally agree. I am finally shoring up my Spanish and it is fairly painless.
smaili 11y ago
Anybody else feel a little nervous when a free language tool is valued in the hundreds of millions?
- jamisteven 11y ago
  Indeed.
- hmate9 11y ago
  They provide official language exams right on your mobile device for $20.
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    What does "official language exams" mean?
- therobot24 11y ago
  Nah, they definitely provide value. Have you used it before? For someone who only took a few years of a foreign language in high school, it's a great refresher. If they could also structure the lessons to teach in a similar way to the classroom (e.g., actively showing different conjugations instead of just assuming you'll remember or pick up on it yourself) then they'll be golden.
  - jfoster 11y ago
    They've found an effective solution for self-study. Anything contextually different (eg. for classrooms) might need a vastly different solution. Suppose they even managed to come up with that classroom solution for language learning. How does what they currently have help them? Teachers, schools & government education departments make the purchasing decision for classrooms, so what students use in their time outside class isn't especially helpful in driving more sales of a classroom solution. If they came up with something good for classrooms, they might as well axe or install paywalls into their existing stuff.
    - therobot24 11y ago
      > How does what they currently have help them? It helps the user better understand the language, which I believe is their goal to begin with. For example, their current approach presents a conjugated word in the context of a provided sentence or phrase. When I'm refreshing a language this isn't a big deal, but if I'm starting from scratch I don't have the foreknowledge to understand exactly when and why the word appears as such. I don't really need to argue that learning the language structure is much easier than memorizing a large list of words and phrases. More simply a better tool for learning, is a better product on their end. They don't have to sell it to schools, but if teachers see that it can work in tandem with their curriculum then it will translate to more users. > If they came up with something good for classrooms, they might as well axe or install paywalls into their existing stuff. You're only looking at monetizing and forgetting about growth.
      - jfoster 11y ago
        > You're only looking at monetizing and forgetting about growth. Because of the valuation size, and because I think they've succeeded at growing quickly and becoming the most well-known language learning solution. Everything else about Duolingo looks really good, but the monetization side of things seems to be the elephant in the room. What I'm also pointing out is that the growth among language learners cannot be easily translated into growth in institutions. To grow in institutions they will still need sales teams, and their consumer userbase doesn't necessarily gain them much of an advantage in that game. All that said, in this article they hint at having plans beyond the $20 certification they've announced. To achieve the valuation they've now got, I think it's fair to say they do have a solid plan that they just haven't made public knowledge yet. It's probably something that will be a bit controversial among their userbase, like paywalls.
- talideon 11y ago
  Not at all, because the free language tool is just half of what they do. The part that actually makes the money is crowdsourced translations, which are done by more advanced students as practice.
  - cshimmin 11y ago
    Actually from the posted article, it sounds like they've been phasing out the translation-as-a-service part of their business for over a year now. Their reasoning is that "eventually businesses tend to pay more attention to the parts of the company that are profitable," and they want to be an education company, not a translation company. Evidently they're planning to make money from paid certification tests and they have "other plans to monetize".
- jasondc 11y ago
  Rosetta Stone, which seems to be the current leader in language training made $261 million last year. The funny thing is Duolingo is now valued higher than Rosetta Stone: https://www.google.com/finance?q=RST https://www.google.com/finance?q=RST
  - DannoHung 11y ago
    Yeah, and there's a reason for that: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ARST&fstype=ii&ei=jlJ4VYHGPMecqwG53IHIAg https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ARST&fstype=ii&ei=jlJ...
  - rubyrescue 11y ago
    Rosetta Stone's DVD based revenue model is crumbling.
  - charlesism 11y ago
    Having used both Duolingo and Rosetta Stone, that seems about right. Rosetta Stone will probably survive, but not by selling directly to end-users.
- daniel-levin 11y ago
  >> Instead, the company is now using its Test Center certification program as a revenue source (the tests cost $20) and says that it has other plans to monetize.
- philipjoubert 11y ago
  They also monetize with a paid translation service. The service is exposed as challenges to users and in effect they crowd translate stuff.
  - jfoster 11y ago
    Read the last part of the article. They still do that for CNN, but are not taking on new customers for that service.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- bdcravens 11y ago
  It's worth less than some companies that provide even less value.
- melling 11y ago
  They have a business model where they sell translation services to CNN, etc. I don't have a business model but I'm trying to bootstrap an iOS language software company. Duolingo is really good but I think language learning is difficult enough that there are other good ideas worth pursuing. Anyway, if anyone is learning another language, I'd appreciate any feedback on my apps. Here's my Spanish app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-lite/id388918463?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-lite/id388918463?...
  - jfoster 11y ago
    From the article: > As a company spokesperson told me, the company actually tabled its ambitions around translations about a year and a half ago and hasn’t scaled the businesses or accepted new clients (it’s still working with CNN, though).
    - melling 11y ago
      Well, that gives me a little hope. Consumers don't part with their money as easily a business does. People want technology to change education but they don't want to spend any money.
    - organsnyder 11y ago
      That makes sense to me. Automated translation software has made huge strides in the past decade, so Duolingo's crowdfunded approach (as cool as it is) will likely be obsolete in the fairly near future anyways.
  - nols 11y ago
    I don't think they rely on translations anymore, now their income comes from certified exams.
- mbesto 11y ago
  So you might ask “how can you make money giving away a learning app?” This past week DuoLingo answered that question with the commercial release of the DuoLingo Test Center. The DuoLingo Test Center is currently free but it won’t be for long. Give it a try if you’d like to see how it works. Once the DuoLingo Test is accepted at schools and employers, the company plans to charge $20 to take its test. There’s an established incumbent (monopoly) in this market called TOEFL. If you’ve come to the US to study, you’ve probably taken this test. It’s a lot more expensive than $20 per test and DuoLingo is out to prove it can do this testing less expensively and better. [0] - http://avc.com/2014/07/freemium-in-education/ http://avc.com/2014/07/freemium-in-education/
  - mattmanser 11y ago
    A non-profit with a cool $1 billion in turnover according to this dodgy looking site: http://www.guidestar.org/organizations/21-0634479/educational-testing-service.aspx http://www.guidestar.org/organizations/21-0634479/educationa...
  - rkrzr 11y ago
    I hope they succeed in taking away some market share from TOEFL. The TOEFL test is ridiculously overpriced for what they provide and your results expire (no joke) after 2 years. Since clearly you will have forgotten everything you knew about that language in 2 years time... Go Duolingo!
    - Grue3 11y ago
      >Since clearly you will have forgotten everything you knew about that language in 2 years time... They are not wrong. I passed Duolingo Spanish course (it might have been extended since then) and barely remember anything now. I was also studying German in school, and later French by myself to the point where I could even speak with native speakers a little. Hardly remember anything either. English is the only foreign language that I haven't forgot because I use it constantly. But if you're not using a foreign language, after passing the test you will completely forget it in 2 years.
- jfoster 11y ago
  I agree with your sentiment. There's no denying that they are a valuable tool for language learners, but they do not have the monetization figured out yet. Originally they were going to provide translation services, which hasn't worked out. Now they're trying to provide certifications for people who pay a fee. Will that work? Maybe it will. What feels odd is that the valuation is so high for a company that hasn't yet figured out a reliable way to make money from what it does. If all else fails, they could install paywalls, but a substantial portion of their users might abandon them at that point.
- jgalt212 11y ago
  Not to be trite, but they can (not saying they do) make good coin selling all sorts of personal data about their users to the highest bidder. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7698130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7698130 So it's not free in the free beer sense.
- rawnlq 11y ago
  Duolingo is started by Luis von Ahn who invented reCAPTCHA. He pioneered the field of human computation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx082gDwGcM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx082gDwGcM. He can monetize this in a similar way. Crowd sourced translation service where the more advanced language learners translate books or something. It will be higher quality than google translate for sure.
  - wan23 11y ago
    Good guess, but the article explains how paid translation wasn't working so well for them. It seems unclear how they are going to make enough money to justify this valuation.
  - thraxil 11y ago
    The article explicitly states that Duolingo moved away from this model though: "As a company spokesperson told me, the company actually tabled its ambitions around translations about a year and a half ago and hasn’t scaled the businesses or accepted new clients"
- ianstallings 11y ago
  Have you used it? It's much more than that. It's actually quite a good learning tool for more than just languages. The system is smart.
- rokhayakebe 11y ago
  Not really. The course can be free, but the certification paid. If every year 1% of the user base pays $50 to $100 for certification, that is worth $50M to $100M in revenue. I know there was a time I would pay $100 to get an English certification (before coming to the US for school). I also "help" teach French in college and privately. If they required a certification, I would not have minded paying $200 at that time to get a certificate.
edgarvaldes 11y ago
It's really great to see a platform that provides so much real value doing so well.
darkstar999 11y ago
I was hoping to find Japanese last time I checked their site. Any good way to learn it?
- gizmo686 11y ago
  I don't have any particularly good resources for grammar, but to learn the writing system and some vocab, I would recommend [1]. [1] https://www.wanikani.com/ https://www.wanikani.com/
- brobinson 11y ago
  Start out with Michel Thomas' Japanese course. It's just speaking/listening, no reading/writing. I learned more from that in two hours than I did in a month of self-study using other programs. You can probably find it for free on Youtube. The venerable Mr. Thomas is no longer with us, unfortunately.
shkkmo 11y ago
I am currently in Uruguay learning Spanish and Duolingo is one the the 4 tools I use on my phone for it. The other three are: Ankidroid: A flashcard app for adding vocabulary I need and phrases I want to come more fluidly. Spanish Trainer: A spaced repetition verb conjugation app as Duolingo doesn't give me enough practice with this. Google Translate What would speed things up for me is the ability to easily import translations from Google Translate into my flashcard app. Duolingo needs to provide better user control of the spaced repitition input and some setting for the skills practice sessions. I would love the ability to make a certain drill or word as Finished or Very Confident so I don't have to waste time practicing stuff I already know. I would also love the ability to mark certain words or drills as important or useful so that they get repeated more frequently when practicing skills. (Edited for formatting and the friendly grammar red cross :))
- organsnyder 11y ago
  > I would love the ability to make a certain drill or word as Finished or Very Confident so I don't have to waste time practicing stuff I already know. It's my understanding that Duolingo (and similar tools) aren't quizzing you just to make you prove that you know a word. It's actually part of the process of ensuring retention, and the act of recalling the word is actually part of the process of storing the information more permanently in the brain. Therefore, the ability to mark a word as "learned" may be counterproductive long-term. Of course, the algorithm isn't perfect, but it's more advanced than simply checking off a box that you've learned the word and never need to practice it again. That being said, I do agree that more customization would be helpful.
  - shkkmo 11y ago
    I don't need to have certain words drilled into me because I've known them for over a decade. I also know what words come easily and immediately when I am trying to speak and thus are drilled into me by constant use. The two other spaced repetition tools I use (which I mentioned) allow me to specify how well I know the answer and use when I have a high level of confidence in my knowledge, the words will come less frequently. (edit: added second paragraph)
- 11y ago
iKenshu 11y ago
Duolingo is my best tool to learn English <3
- bradbeattie 11y ago
  I don't mean to nitpick, but the phrase "my best" sounds strange. "It is my favourite" or "It is the best" sound notably better.
  - shkkmo 11y ago
    To me, a "duolingo is the best tool I have for learning english" sounds more natural to me as an american.
emergentcypher 11y ago
Still waiting for their Russian course!
- Balgair 11y ago
  Any word on getting over the hurdle of using another alphabet on english keyboards?
  - Symbiote 11y ago
    That should be easy on mobile devices. At least one of ä, á, à, â, æ, å is necessary for most of the supported languages.
    - mhartl 11y ago
      Those characters are still based on the Roman alphabet, though. Non-Roman alphabets such as Cyrillic are trickier. For example, I can copy-and-paste Cyrillic, as in русский, but I don't know offhand how to produce those characters on my keyboard, much less on my iPad or mobile device.
      - renaudg 11y ago
        On your iPad or iPhone, you'd just add a Russian keyboard ...
      - Symbiote 11y ago
        When I travelled round Georgia and Armenia for a couple of weeks I enabled the Russian, Georgian and Armenian keyboard layouts for my phone (it's just a setting, and then a key labelled EN-RU-GE-AR appeared). With significant effort I could type some Georgian or Armenian into Google Translate -- they are awful, awful scripts. Russian was easier, but not as widespread as I'd expected. I could also let other people type things, and they all know about switching between layouts, since they do it all the time to type email addresses etc.
      - emergentcypher 11y ago
coob 11y ago
In order to pull in $50m revenue per year, Duolingo are going to need to sell 2,500,000 certifications. Is that doable?
- aaggarwal 11y ago
  I guess they might operate at a loss for a few years. While its a difficult goal, but it is possible. They have the biggest market possible. Language is elementary for humans. I think if they can target schools and universities with a commercial model, it could really generate the kind of revenues your talking about.
- j_baker 11y ago
  $50 million seems like an arbitrary amount of revenue to expect DuoLingo to pull in. How do you come up with that number?
  - balazsdavid987 11y ago
    I think it came from dividing the $470M valuation with 10 and rounding up.
  - coob 11y ago
    Rosetta Stone pull in that much per quarter. And manage to run at loss, with it.
ionforce 11y ago
Great to see them doing so well. Personally, I'd like to see language learning apps explore the parts of language learning that Duolingo isn't good at. Also a high-quality, open source version of Duo would be awesome for super minority, low infrastructure, and/or conlang languages.
- Balgair 11y ago
  Well, they are coming out with Klingon sometime in the next year. Granted, it's a small language, but it seems they are amenable to conlangs. Maybe, they will also have an ability to add your own conlang, so that you and friends can communicate and expand the lang.
  - deleted 11y ago
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- coob 11y ago
  We[1] take a different approach to language learning by focusing on usable, real language from the get go. It's more of a phrasebook that uses games and activities to get the vocab you need into your memory than a grammar learning engine. [1] http://utalk.com/app http://utalk.com/app (App Store link)
- chucksmash 11y ago
  "A planned or constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary have been consciously devised for human or human-like communication, instead of having developed naturally. It is also referred to as an artificial or invented language." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language
orthoganol 11y ago
Only complaint is they appear to have no priority in supporting languages of the East, where the majority of the world lives. I guess their main demo, at least at one point, was Western students, who aren't typically taught those languages in school. In the least, teaching Mandarin should be a higher priority than half the languages they support.
- Balgair 11y ago
  True, but the issue is the keyboard. Notice they don't have really any Cyrillic languages either. Trying to get people used to using many ALT and key combos is a tough starting point for a lot of gamified learners. Japanese has been on the block since Duolingo began, but again, the keyboard is the main hurdle.
  - krebby 11y ago
    The website currently provides clickable symbols. For mobile it's as easy as switching the language on your keyboard.
  - Matachines 11y ago
    Might be wrong with this and it might not fit Duolingo's app but it would not be too bad to at least have spoken Japanese with romaji. I think most people will admit that learning to write Japanese well is something not many foreigners will ever do, while speaking isn't that terribly difficult. I spent a little bit learning Japanese and I found that learning speaking + romaji only at first was not only easier, but helped when looking at symbols later (since I already knew how the words were said).
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - aphedox 11y ago
    They offer cyrillic with the new Ukrainian course.
    - Balgair 11y ago
ctrager 11y ago
With regards to learning Spanish, here's a free resource I like: https://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/ https://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/ Short, graded videos with transcripts and translations.
aikah 11y ago
I miss livemocha , I met a ton of people in real life thanks to that app. Rosetta Stone just killed everything that was good about it.
- deleted 11y ago
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tabrischen 11y ago
Have been a fan of Duolingo for a long time. I see it as an important enabler of people who're aspiring hypergots or polygots. I can't wait for Esperanto to become available within the app.
- VLM 11y ago
  Memrise is about the same and has some courses. http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/esperanto/ http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/esperanto/
tonydiv 11y ago
Goes to show that you can still try to figure out a business model after having raised this much money. Even with a superstar CEO.
- ajmurmann 11y ago
  I learned on Silicon Valley that you don't want any revenue anyways, because people will just expect insane revenue growth once you have any revenue. I didn't know if I was supposed to laugh or if someone just had spoken some truth everyone in the valley is too correct to actually say.
thanatropism 11y ago
Duolingo ist sehr gut, sehr gut!
probably_wrong 11y ago
Since there are so many Duoling fans here, I have to ask: am I the only one who finds the app almost unusable because there's no theory? For German I used to try the exercises on my commute, but suddenly the app expected me to use "dem" instead of "der" without any explanation. I can't be the only one with this problem, right? Or is there a "new concepts" tab that I've never seen?
- shkkmo 11y ago
  I have a similar problem getting the hang of Spanish conjugation. The app is still very useful, but it shouldn't be the only thing you use to learn the language.
  - addandsubtract 11y ago
    The best site I've found for translations and conjugations (through the duolingo comments) is spanishdict.com [1]. They have verb conjugations for every tense and offer a wide variety of example usages. [1] http://www.spanishdict.com/ http://www.spanishdict.com/
- addandsubtract 11y ago
  No, you're not the only one. Duolingo does throw you into the cold water and expects you to pick up new concepts within a new lesson. The only support Duolingo offers for new concepts is through the comment section where other learners and native speakers explain or link to explanations of those concepts. It's not ideal, but it was good enough for me to complete the spanish course.
- maw 11y ago
  I think the pendulum's swung too far in the other direction: a proper mix of theory and practice is self-evidently the way to go--especially when immersion is not feasible--and the only part worth debating is exactly what mix to use. I never used Duolingo much because you have to type on a phone which is pure pain, but here's another reason I'd avoid it, and ultimately a more important one. (Also, in case you haven't yet worked it out or looked it up somewhere else: you need to use "dem" with masculine and neuter indirect objects, often translatable into English using "to" or "for", and with certain prepositions. It is the dative masculine/neuter definite article.)
joshdotsmith 11y ago
Duolingo is pretty nice, but often the voices are odd and I'm not so sure the pronunciation detection is accurate. Hard to complain for a free product, of course. Lingvist is fairly new and French-only for now, yet I feel like I'm making more progress with that than I did with Duolingo. Not sure why that's the case. I'm pairing both with French vocabulary decks on Brainscape, which is an Anki-like SRS app. Lingvist claims it will switch to a paid model soon, and Brainscape decks are in-app purchases. Lingvist is both mobile and web, though I always prefer the web interfaces when I have access to them. Wish it also had a speaking component. I've started using Verbling for having conversations but so far they seem pretty unstructured and not worth the money. This will, of course, depend on who you choose. There don't seem to be a lot of French to English options there. If anyone has suggestions for alternatives, I'd love to hear them. I'd like to rapidly improve my French before a trip at the end of August.
- tbrake 11y ago
  FWIW I saw on /r/duolingo that French could be getting a new TTS soon http://i.imgur.com/haowkeG.png http://i.imgur.com/haowkeG.png - for certain values of soon. edit: ah sorry, missed the August bit on the last line. Probably not the value of soon you need.
- leotin 11y ago
  You should try Frantastique, it's pretty cool.
c0wb0yc0d3r 11y ago
I wish Duolingo had a Vietnamese course. You can translate the site to Vietnamese but they can't teach it to you, come on.
- bayesianhorse 11y ago
  I think there is a Vietnamese course hatching.
  - c0wb0yc0d3r 11y ago
    That would be great. Is there a source for this, or is it just whispers on the Internet? Edit: Found it, http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/vi/en/status http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/vi/en/status
- Symbiote 11y ago
  > come on Nice Viet-English pun there. (Cám ơn == thank you.)
bayesianhorse 11y ago
To me this looks a bit like a "charity" investment. I've heard rumours Duolingo was running thin on capital while frantically searching for a business model. However, despite not being profitable yet, Duolingo is doing a tremendous amount of good. I know quite a bit about language learning and learning in general, and I have never seen a better tool for learning the languages they offer. The combination of words, sentences, smart repetition and text-to-speech is pretty much unique, and the courses I've seen are quite well designed. Caveat: No, Duolingo alone is not enough to get fluent in a language, but if you used it as your only (or major) tool, you'll get very close.
- drpgq 11y ago
  Yeah I have to wonder how great Duolingo would have been if I had it as a kid as a learning tool for French (I'm Canadian). I generally got good French marks, but I think Duolingo would have boosted my actual ability.
  - bayesianhorse 11y ago
    I think Duolingo is great for exactly that kind of situation, where multiple languages exist in one country, and that is actually the norm, rather than the exception. For example there is also a course in the incubator teaching Catalonian for Spanish speakers, Catalonian being a language spoken in a part of southern Spain.
dccoolgai 11y ago
Not mentioned in the article is IMHO the most important thing they are currently working on: Language testing/validation/badging. In the context of the "end of college" era, this work in microcredentialing may be the most valuable thing they are doing. Not teaching language, but validating as a trusted 3rd party what an individual knows.
fataliss 11y ago
If they could add some Asian languages, at least Korean which uses an alphabet and would probably not require as much special dev as something like Chinese (mandarin) would, that would be super sweet!
- jfoster 11y ago
  Prior to having seen Duolingo, I started a service that is similar to Duolingo, but only for Mandarin Chinese. It's only free for the first 60 words (then $5.99/mo), and I don't think the proposition is quite right yet. It's at http://fastchinese.com http://fastchinese.com if you'd like to check it out. Feedback appreciated here or via the site.
copsarebastards 11y ago
This is the kind of startup I believe and hope will survive when the current tech bubble bursts. They have a real technical solution to a real problem and are making their money by charging people for a service that is worthwhile enough to pay for. They're contributing to humanity in a meaningful way that's worthwhile. All these social media sites that make their money off advertising or selling user data can all go bankrupt as far as I'm concerned. Their users are coming to their websites for the short-term dopamine rush brought by the novelty of social media interaction: these websites are not different in any meaningful way from drug dealers, and they're costing millions of people happiness and productivity. They sell themselves as communications platforms but in reality, they compromise on privacy and as a result some of the most important forms of communication are hampered by their influence. As developers I think we have an ethical imperative to work for organizations like Duolingo who are pushing humanity forward and not social media companies who are holding humanity back.
- Balgair 11y ago
  Yes, like Youtube, Duolingo has what it takes to function in a capitalistic system. For capitalism to work, you (very grossly) need 3 things: Capital (ships, factories, stamp machines, etc), Laborers (gardeners, secretaries, miners, etc ), and Customers (vinyl collectors, beer drinkers, tourists, etc). Many companies in tech confuse 2 or more of these things as the same. Twitter boasts of it's users, which one thinks of as customers, but those are in fact the capital. Twitter's real customers are who pays to advertize on it. Facebook is just the same, their customers are businesses. That bears repeating, FB is a business-to-business style enterprise. Youtube, however, is better off. Laborers are the people that upload videos and workers at Youtube, Capital is the servers and all the software and somewhat the content creators, Customers are people watching and businesses trying to advertize. Though it is not as clear cut as a sandwich shop, it makes more sense than Yo or the myriad other tech startups out there that confuse these 3 key groups. Duolingo is also 'unconfused'. Capital is the language service, website, and software of repetition. Customers are, again, the people using the service and other companies and people trying to get translations. Labor is, again, the people translating and the employees. In lieu of being paid for the translating, the users are 'paid' in the free service provided. Overall, I think it works pretty well, and, according to the OP, so do many other people.
NN88 11y ago
is this any good?
Enzolangellotti 11y ago
Has any of you tried Pimsleur and Assimil? I'm learning French, Hebrew and Russian, and so far it has been great.
euoia 11y ago
Here's a little web app I made for practising French verbs: http://practicefrenchverbs.com/ http://practicefrenchverbs.com/ The code is on GitHub: https://github.com/euoia/node-reverb https://github.com/euoia/node-reverb
zackery616 11y ago
We made a language exchange social app that's the complete opposite of the Duolingo approach. You learn and exchange more than 120 languages with native speakers from close to 200 countries. www.HelloTalk.com
zackery616 11y ago
We made a language exchange social app that's the complete opposite of the Duolingo approach. You learn and exchange more than 120 languages with native speakers from close to 200 countries. www.HelloTalk.com
changg 11y ago
Hope one day my wife can learn English with it.
micheljansen 11y ago
What amazes me most about all this is just how badly Rosetta Stone missed the boat. I used one of their (rather expensive) lessons years ago, but the lack of a mobile version meant I could only use it at home and not on the go, when I actually had time to spare. It seemed like such a no-brainier to me at the time. In a time where people were paying £300 for their retail software, they could easily have sold loads on the App Store. Now I use Duolingo multiple times per week on my phone and I wouldn't even think about paying for Rosetta Stone anymore.
- bduerst 11y ago
  Speaking of Rosetta Stone, their market cap is only $189m and they made $260m in revenue last year. I get that DuoLingo has a nice mobile interface, but do they have a larger marketshare than Rosetta Stone?
buster 11y ago
That's really good to hear. And it's a shame that such a company "only" raises $45M where Wunderlist gets 100-200 (i like Wunderlist but i think there is so much more value and potential in Duolingo!). I tried several Android apps for learning new languages and duolingo was by far the best, imo. Now, can i have German->Japanese in Duolingo, please? :)

347 points by shacker 11y ago

Duolingo is the best learning platform I've ever used. Even better than Khan Academy (and Khan Academy is really really good). Happy to see them doing so well!

happyscrappy 11y ago
Totally agree. I am finally shoring up my Spanish and it is fairly painless.

smaili 11y ago

Anybody else feel a little nervous when a free language tool is valued in the hundreds of millions?

jamisteven 11y ago
Indeed.
hmate9 11y ago
They provide official language exams right on your mobile device for $20.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  What does "official language exams" mean?
therobot24 11y ago
Nah, they definitely provide value. Have you used it before? For someone who only took a few years of a foreign language in high school, it's a great refresher. If they could also structure the lessons to teach in a similar way to the classroom (e.g., actively showing different conjugations instead of just assuming you'll remember or pick up on it yourself) then they'll be golden.
- jfoster 11y ago
  They've found an effective solution for self-study. Anything contextually different (eg. for classrooms) might need a vastly different solution. Suppose they even managed to come up with that classroom solution for language learning. How does what they currently have help them? Teachers, schools & government education departments make the purchasing decision for classrooms, so what students use in their time outside class isn't especially helpful in driving more sales of a classroom solution. If they came up with something good for classrooms, they might as well axe or install paywalls into their existing stuff.
  - therobot24 11y ago
    > How does what they currently have help them? It helps the user better understand the language, which I believe is their goal to begin with. For example, their current approach presents a conjugated word in the context of a provided sentence or phrase. When I'm refreshing a language this isn't a big deal, but if I'm starting from scratch I don't have the foreknowledge to understand exactly when and why the word appears as such. I don't really need to argue that learning the language structure is much easier than memorizing a large list of words and phrases. More simply a better tool for learning, is a better product on their end. They don't have to sell it to schools, but if teachers see that it can work in tandem with their curriculum then it will translate to more users. > If they came up with something good for classrooms, they might as well axe or install paywalls into their existing stuff. You're only looking at monetizing and forgetting about growth.
    - jfoster 11y ago
      > You're only looking at monetizing and forgetting about growth. Because of the valuation size, and because I think they've succeeded at growing quickly and becoming the most well-known language learning solution. Everything else about Duolingo looks really good, but the monetization side of things seems to be the elephant in the room. What I'm also pointing out is that the growth among language learners cannot be easily translated into growth in institutions. To grow in institutions they will still need sales teams, and their consumer userbase doesn't necessarily gain them much of an advantage in that game. All that said, in this article they hint at having plans beyond the $20 certification they've announced. To achieve the valuation they've now got, I think it's fair to say they do have a solid plan that they just haven't made public knowledge yet. It's probably something that will be a bit controversial among their userbase, like paywalls.
talideon 11y ago
Not at all, because the free language tool is just half of what they do. The part that actually makes the money is crowdsourced translations, which are done by more advanced students as practice.
- cshimmin 11y ago
  Actually from the posted article, it sounds like they've been phasing out the translation-as-a-service part of their business for over a year now. Their reasoning is that "eventually businesses tend to pay more attention to the parts of the company that are profitable," and they want to be an education company, not a translation company. Evidently they're planning to make money from paid certification tests and they have "other plans to monetize".
jasondc 11y ago
Rosetta Stone, which seems to be the current leader in language training made $261 million last year. The funny thing is Duolingo is now valued higher than Rosetta Stone: https://www.google.com/finance?q=RST https://www.google.com/finance?q=RST
- DannoHung 11y ago
  Yeah, and there's a reason for that: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ARST&fstype=ii&ei=jlJ4VYHGPMecqwG53IHIAg https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ARST&fstype=ii&ei=jlJ...
- rubyrescue 11y ago
  Rosetta Stone's DVD based revenue model is crumbling.
- charlesism 11y ago
  Having used both Duolingo and Rosetta Stone, that seems about right. Rosetta Stone will probably survive, but not by selling directly to end-users.
daniel-levin 11y ago
>> Instead, the company is now using its Test Center certification program as a revenue source (the tests cost $20) and says that it has other plans to monetize.
philipjoubert 11y ago
They also monetize with a paid translation service. The service is exposed as challenges to users and in effect they crowd translate stuff.
- jfoster 11y ago
  Read the last part of the article. They still do that for CNN, but are not taking on new customers for that service.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
bdcravens 11y ago
It's worth less than some companies that provide even less value.
melling 11y ago
They have a business model where they sell translation services to CNN, etc. I don't have a business model but I'm trying to bootstrap an iOS language software company. Duolingo is really good but I think language learning is difficult enough that there are other good ideas worth pursuing. Anyway, if anyone is learning another language, I'd appreciate any feedback on my apps. Here's my Spanish app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-lite/id388918463?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-lite/id388918463?...
- jfoster 11y ago
  From the article: > As a company spokesperson told me, the company actually tabled its ambitions around translations about a year and a half ago and hasn’t scaled the businesses or accepted new clients (it’s still working with CNN, though).
  - melling 11y ago
    Well, that gives me a little hope. Consumers don't part with their money as easily a business does. People want technology to change education but they don't want to spend any money.
  - organsnyder 11y ago
    That makes sense to me. Automated translation software has made huge strides in the past decade, so Duolingo's crowdfunded approach (as cool as it is) will likely be obsolete in the fairly near future anyways.
- nols 11y ago
  I don't think they rely on translations anymore, now their income comes from certified exams.
mbesto 11y ago
So you might ask “how can you make money giving away a learning app?” This past week DuoLingo answered that question with the commercial release of the DuoLingo Test Center. The DuoLingo Test Center is currently free but it won’t be for long. Give it a try if you’d like to see how it works. Once the DuoLingo Test is accepted at schools and employers, the company plans to charge $20 to take its test. There’s an established incumbent (monopoly) in this market called TOEFL. If you’ve come to the US to study, you’ve probably taken this test. It’s a lot more expensive than $20 per test and DuoLingo is out to prove it can do this testing less expensively and better. [0] - http://avc.com/2014/07/freemium-in-education/ http://avc.com/2014/07/freemium-in-education/
- mattmanser 11y ago
  A non-profit with a cool $1 billion in turnover according to this dodgy looking site: http://www.guidestar.org/organizations/21-0634479/educational-testing-service.aspx http://www.guidestar.org/organizations/21-0634479/educationa...
- rkrzr 11y ago
  I hope they succeed in taking away some market share from TOEFL. The TOEFL test is ridiculously overpriced for what they provide and your results expire (no joke) after 2 years. Since clearly you will have forgotten everything you knew about that language in 2 years time... Go Duolingo!
  - Grue3 11y ago
    >Since clearly you will have forgotten everything you knew about that language in 2 years time... They are not wrong. I passed Duolingo Spanish course (it might have been extended since then) and barely remember anything now. I was also studying German in school, and later French by myself to the point where I could even speak with native speakers a little. Hardly remember anything either. English is the only foreign language that I haven't forgot because I use it constantly. But if you're not using a foreign language, after passing the test you will completely forget it in 2 years.
jfoster 11y ago
I agree with your sentiment. There's no denying that they are a valuable tool for language learners, but they do not have the monetization figured out yet. Originally they were going to provide translation services, which hasn't worked out. Now they're trying to provide certifications for people who pay a fee. Will that work? Maybe it will. What feels odd is that the valuation is so high for a company that hasn't yet figured out a reliable way to make money from what it does. If all else fails, they could install paywalls, but a substantial portion of their users might abandon them at that point.
jgalt212 11y ago
Not to be trite, but they can (not saying they do) make good coin selling all sorts of personal data about their users to the highest bidder. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7698130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7698130 So it's not free in the free beer sense.
rawnlq 11y ago
Duolingo is started by Luis von Ahn who invented reCAPTCHA. He pioneered the field of human computation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx082gDwGcM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx082gDwGcM. He can monetize this in a similar way. Crowd sourced translation service where the more advanced language learners translate books or something. It will be higher quality than google translate for sure.
- wan23 11y ago
  Good guess, but the article explains how paid translation wasn't working so well for them. It seems unclear how they are going to make enough money to justify this valuation.
- thraxil 11y ago
  The article explicitly states that Duolingo moved away from this model though: "As a company spokesperson told me, the company actually tabled its ambitions around translations about a year and a half ago and hasn’t scaled the businesses or accepted new clients"
ianstallings 11y ago
Have you used it? It's much more than that. It's actually quite a good learning tool for more than just languages. The system is smart.
rokhayakebe 11y ago
Not really. The course can be free, but the certification paid. If every year 1% of the user base pays $50 to $100 for certification, that is worth $50M to $100M in revenue. I know there was a time I would pay $100 to get an English certification (before coming to the US for school). I also "help" teach French in college and privately. If they required a certification, I would not have minded paying $200 at that time to get a certificate.

edgarvaldes 11y ago

It's really great to see a platform that provides so much real value doing so well.

darkstar999 11y ago

I was hoping to find Japanese last time I checked their site. Any good way to learn it?

gizmo686 11y ago
I don't have any particularly good resources for grammar, but to learn the writing system and some vocab, I would recommend [1]. [1] https://www.wanikani.com/ https://www.wanikani.com/
brobinson 11y ago
Start out with Michel Thomas' Japanese course. It's just speaking/listening, no reading/writing. I learned more from that in two hours than I did in a month of self-study using other programs. You can probably find it for free on Youtube. The venerable Mr. Thomas is no longer with us, unfortunately.

shkkmo 11y ago

I am currently in Uruguay learning Spanish and Duolingo is one the the 4 tools I use on my phone for it. The other three are: Ankidroid: A flashcard app for adding vocabulary I need and phrases I want to come more fluidly. Spanish Trainer: A spaced repetition verb conjugation app as Duolingo doesn't give me enough practice with this. Google Translate What would speed things up for me is the ability to easily import translations from Google Translate into my flashcard app. Duolingo needs to provide better user control of the spaced repitition input and some setting for the skills practice sessions. I would love the ability to make a certain drill or word as Finished or Very Confident so I don't have to waste time practicing stuff I already know. I would also love the ability to mark certain words or drills as important or useful so that they get repeated more frequently when practicing skills. (Edited for formatting and the friendly grammar red cross :))

organsnyder 11y ago
> I would love the ability to make a certain drill or word as Finished or Very Confident so I don't have to waste time practicing stuff I already know. It's my understanding that Duolingo (and similar tools) aren't quizzing you just to make you prove that you know a word. It's actually part of the process of ensuring retention, and the act of recalling the word is actually part of the process of storing the information more permanently in the brain. Therefore, the ability to mark a word as "learned" may be counterproductive long-term. Of course, the algorithm isn't perfect, but it's more advanced than simply checking off a box that you've learned the word and never need to practice it again. That being said, I do agree that more customization would be helpful.
- shkkmo 11y ago
  I don't need to have certain words drilled into me because I've known them for over a decade. I also know what words come easily and immediately when I am trying to speak and thus are drilled into me by constant use. The two other spaced repetition tools I use (which I mentioned) allow me to specify how well I know the answer and use when I have a high level of confidence in my knowledge, the words will come less frequently. (edit: added second paragraph)
11y ago

iKenshu 11y ago

Duolingo is my best tool to learn English <3

bradbeattie 11y ago
I don't mean to nitpick, but the phrase "my best" sounds strange. "It is my favourite" or "It is the best" sound notably better.
- shkkmo 11y ago
  To me, a "duolingo is the best tool I have for learning english" sounds more natural to me as an american.

emergentcypher 11y ago

Still waiting for their Russian course!

Balgair 11y ago
Any word on getting over the hurdle of using another alphabet on english keyboards?
- Symbiote 11y ago
  That should be easy on mobile devices. At least one of ä, á, à, â, æ, å is necessary for most of the supported languages.
  - mhartl 11y ago
    Those characters are still based on the Roman alphabet, though. Non-Roman alphabets such as Cyrillic are trickier. For example, I can copy-and-paste Cyrillic, as in русский, but I don't know offhand how to produce those characters on my keyboard, much less on my iPad or mobile device.
    - renaudg 11y ago
      On your iPad or iPhone, you'd just add a Russian keyboard ...
    - Symbiote 11y ago
      When I travelled round Georgia and Armenia for a couple of weeks I enabled the Russian, Georgian and Armenian keyboard layouts for my phone (it's just a setting, and then a key labelled EN-RU-GE-AR appeared). With significant effort I could type some Georgian or Armenian into Google Translate -- they are awful, awful scripts. Russian was easier, but not as widespread as I'd expected. I could also let other people type things, and they all know about switching between layouts, since they do it all the time to type email addresses etc.
    - emergentcypher 11y ago

coob 11y ago

In order to pull in $50m revenue per year, Duolingo are going to need to sell 2,500,000 certifications. Is that doable?

aaggarwal 11y ago
I guess they might operate at a loss for a few years. While its a difficult goal, but it is possible. They have the biggest market possible. Language is elementary for humans. I think if they can target schools and universities with a commercial model, it could really generate the kind of revenues your talking about.
j_baker 11y ago
$50 million seems like an arbitrary amount of revenue to expect DuoLingo to pull in. How do you come up with that number?
- balazsdavid987 11y ago
  I think it came from dividing the $470M valuation with 10 and rounding up.
- coob 11y ago
  Rosetta Stone pull in that much per quarter. And manage to run at loss, with it.

ionforce 11y ago

Great to see them doing so well. Personally, I'd like to see language learning apps explore the parts of language learning that Duolingo isn't good at. Also a high-quality, open source version of Duo would be awesome for super minority, low infrastructure, and/or conlang languages.

Balgair 11y ago
Well, they are coming out with Klingon sometime in the next year. Granted, it's a small language, but it seems they are amenable to conlangs. Maybe, they will also have an ability to add your own conlang, so that you and friends can communicate and expand the lang.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
coob 11y ago
We[1] take a different approach to language learning by focusing on usable, real language from the get go. It's more of a phrasebook that uses games and activities to get the vocab you need into your memory than a grammar learning engine. [1] http://utalk.com/app http://utalk.com/app (App Store link)
chucksmash 11y ago
"A planned or constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary have been consciously devised for human or human-like communication, instead of having developed naturally. It is also referred to as an artificial or invented language." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language

orthoganol 11y ago

Only complaint is they appear to have no priority in supporting languages of the East, where the majority of the world lives. I guess their main demo, at least at one point, was Western students, who aren't typically taught those languages in school. In the least, teaching Mandarin should be a higher priority than half the languages they support.

Balgair 11y ago
True, but the issue is the keyboard. Notice they don't have really any Cyrillic languages either. Trying to get people used to using many ALT and key combos is a tough starting point for a lot of gamified learners. Japanese has been on the block since Duolingo began, but again, the keyboard is the main hurdle.
- krebby 11y ago
  The website currently provides clickable symbols. For mobile it's as easy as switching the language on your keyboard.
- Matachines 11y ago
  Might be wrong with this and it might not fit Duolingo's app but it would not be too bad to at least have spoken Japanese with romaji. I think most people will admit that learning to write Japanese well is something not many foreigners will ever do, while speaking isn't that terribly difficult. I spent a little bit learning Japanese and I found that learning speaking + romaji only at first was not only easier, but helped when looking at symbols later (since I already knew how the words were said).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- aphedox 11y ago
  They offer cyrillic with the new Ukrainian course.
  - Balgair 11y ago

ctrager 11y ago

With regards to learning Spanish, here's a free resource I like: https://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/ https://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/ Short, graded videos with transcripts and translations.

aikah 11y ago

I miss livemocha , I met a ton of people in real life thanks to that app. Rosetta Stone just killed everything that was good about it.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

tabrischen 11y ago

Have been a fan of Duolingo for a long time. I see it as an important enabler of people who're aspiring hypergots or polygots. I can't wait for Esperanto to become available within the app.

VLM 11y ago
Memrise is about the same and has some courses. http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/esperanto/ http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/esperanto/

tonydiv 11y ago

Goes to show that you can still try to figure out a business model after having raised this much money. Even with a superstar CEO.

ajmurmann 11y ago
I learned on Silicon Valley that you don't want any revenue anyways, because people will just expect insane revenue growth once you have any revenue. I didn't know if I was supposed to laugh or if someone just had spoken some truth everyone in the valley is too correct to actually say.

thanatropism 11y ago

Duolingo ist sehr gut, sehr gut!

probably_wrong 11y ago

Since there are so many Duoling fans here, I have to ask: am I the only one who finds the app almost unusable because there's no theory? For German I used to try the exercises on my commute, but suddenly the app expected me to use "dem" instead of "der" without any explanation. I can't be the only one with this problem, right? Or is there a "new concepts" tab that I've never seen?

shkkmo 11y ago
I have a similar problem getting the hang of Spanish conjugation. The app is still very useful, but it shouldn't be the only thing you use to learn the language.
- addandsubtract 11y ago
  The best site I've found for translations and conjugations (through the duolingo comments) is spanishdict.com [1]. They have verb conjugations for every tense and offer a wide variety of example usages. [1] http://www.spanishdict.com/ http://www.spanishdict.com/
addandsubtract 11y ago
No, you're not the only one. Duolingo does throw you into the cold water and expects you to pick up new concepts within a new lesson. The only support Duolingo offers for new concepts is through the comment section where other learners and native speakers explain or link to explanations of those concepts. It's not ideal, but it was good enough for me to complete the spanish course.
maw 11y ago
I think the pendulum's swung too far in the other direction: a proper mix of theory and practice is self-evidently the way to go--especially when immersion is not feasible--and the only part worth debating is exactly what mix to use. I never used Duolingo much because you have to type on a phone which is pure pain, but here's another reason I'd avoid it, and ultimately a more important one. (Also, in case you haven't yet worked it out or looked it up somewhere else: you need to use "dem" with masculine and neuter indirect objects, often translatable into English using "to" or "for", and with certain prepositions. It is the dative masculine/neuter definite article.)

joshdotsmith 11y ago

Duolingo is pretty nice, but often the voices are odd and I'm not so sure the pronunciation detection is accurate. Hard to complain for a free product, of course. Lingvist is fairly new and French-only for now, yet I feel like I'm making more progress with that than I did with Duolingo. Not sure why that's the case. I'm pairing both with French vocabulary decks on Brainscape, which is an Anki-like SRS app. Lingvist claims it will switch to a paid model soon, and Brainscape decks are in-app purchases. Lingvist is both mobile and web, though I always prefer the web interfaces when I have access to them. Wish it also had a speaking component. I've started using Verbling for having conversations but so far they seem pretty unstructured and not worth the money. This will, of course, depend on who you choose. There don't seem to be a lot of French to English options there. If anyone has suggestions for alternatives, I'd love to hear them. I'd like to rapidly improve my French before a trip at the end of August.

tbrake 11y ago
FWIW I saw on /r/duolingo that French could be getting a new TTS soon http://i.imgur.com/haowkeG.png http://i.imgur.com/haowkeG.png - for certain values of soon. edit: ah sorry, missed the August bit on the last line. Probably not the value of soon you need.
leotin 11y ago
You should try Frantastique, it's pretty cool.

c0wb0yc0d3r 11y ago

I wish Duolingo had a Vietnamese course. You can translate the site to Vietnamese but they can't teach it to you, come on.

bayesianhorse 11y ago
I think there is a Vietnamese course hatching.
- c0wb0yc0d3r 11y ago
  That would be great. Is there a source for this, or is it just whispers on the Internet? Edit: Found it, http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/vi/en/status http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/vi/en/status
Symbiote 11y ago
> come on Nice Viet-English pun there. (Cám ơn == thank you.)

bayesianhorse 11y ago

To me this looks a bit like a "charity" investment. I've heard rumours Duolingo was running thin on capital while frantically searching for a business model. However, despite not being profitable yet, Duolingo is doing a tremendous amount of good. I know quite a bit about language learning and learning in general, and I have never seen a better tool for learning the languages they offer. The combination of words, sentences, smart repetition and text-to-speech is pretty much unique, and the courses I've seen are quite well designed. Caveat: No, Duolingo alone is not enough to get fluent in a language, but if you used it as your only (or major) tool, you'll get very close.

drpgq 11y ago
Yeah I have to wonder how great Duolingo would have been if I had it as a kid as a learning tool for French (I'm Canadian). I generally got good French marks, but I think Duolingo would have boosted my actual ability.
- bayesianhorse 11y ago
  I think Duolingo is great for exactly that kind of situation, where multiple languages exist in one country, and that is actually the norm, rather than the exception. For example there is also a course in the incubator teaching Catalonian for Spanish speakers, Catalonian being a language spoken in a part of southern Spain.

dccoolgai 11y ago

Not mentioned in the article is IMHO the most important thing they are currently working on: Language testing/validation/badging. In the context of the "end of college" era, this work in microcredentialing may be the most valuable thing they are doing. Not teaching language, but validating as a trusted 3rd party what an individual knows.

fataliss 11y ago

If they could add some Asian languages, at least Korean which uses an alphabet and would probably not require as much special dev as something like Chinese (mandarin) would, that would be super sweet!

jfoster 11y ago
Prior to having seen Duolingo, I started a service that is similar to Duolingo, but only for Mandarin Chinese. It's only free for the first 60 words (then $5.99/mo), and I don't think the proposition is quite right yet. It's at http://fastchinese.com http://fastchinese.com if you'd like to check it out. Feedback appreciated here or via the site.

copsarebastards 11y ago

This is the kind of startup I believe and hope will survive when the current tech bubble bursts. They have a real technical solution to a real problem and are making their money by charging people for a service that is worthwhile enough to pay for. They're contributing to humanity in a meaningful way that's worthwhile. All these social media sites that make their money off advertising or selling user data can all go bankrupt as far as I'm concerned. Their users are coming to their websites for the short-term dopamine rush brought by the novelty of social media interaction: these websites are not different in any meaningful way from drug dealers, and they're costing millions of people happiness and productivity. They sell themselves as communications platforms but in reality, they compromise on privacy and as a result some of the most important forms of communication are hampered by their influence. As developers I think we have an ethical imperative to work for organizations like Duolingo who are pushing humanity forward and not social media companies who are holding humanity back.

Balgair 11y ago
Yes, like Youtube, Duolingo has what it takes to function in a capitalistic system. For capitalism to work, you (very grossly) need 3 things: Capital (ships, factories, stamp machines, etc), Laborers (gardeners, secretaries, miners, etc ), and Customers (vinyl collectors, beer drinkers, tourists, etc). Many companies in tech confuse 2 or more of these things as the same. Twitter boasts of it's users, which one thinks of as customers, but those are in fact the capital. Twitter's real customers are who pays to advertize on it. Facebook is just the same, their customers are businesses. That bears repeating, FB is a business-to-business style enterprise. Youtube, however, is better off. Laborers are the people that upload videos and workers at Youtube, Capital is the servers and all the software and somewhat the content creators, Customers are people watching and businesses trying to advertize. Though it is not as clear cut as a sandwich shop, it makes more sense than Yo or the myriad other tech startups out there that confuse these 3 key groups. Duolingo is also 'unconfused'. Capital is the language service, website, and software of repetition. Customers are, again, the people using the service and other companies and people trying to get translations. Labor is, again, the people translating and the employees. In lieu of being paid for the translating, the users are 'paid' in the free service provided. Overall, I think it works pretty well, and, according to the OP, so do many other people.

NN88 11y ago

is this any good?

Enzolangellotti 11y ago

Has any of you tried Pimsleur and Assimil? I'm learning French, Hebrew and Russian, and so far it has been great.

euoia 11y ago

Here's a little web app I made for practising French verbs: http://practicefrenchverbs.com/ http://practicefrenchverbs.com/ The code is on GitHub: https://github.com/euoia/node-reverb https://github.com/euoia/node-reverb

zackery616 11y ago

We made a language exchange social app that's the complete opposite of the Duolingo approach. You learn and exchange more than 120 languages with native speakers from close to 200 countries. www.HelloTalk.com

zackery616 11y ago

changg 11y ago

Hope one day my wife can learn English with it.

micheljansen 11y ago

What amazes me most about all this is just how badly Rosetta Stone missed the boat. I used one of their (rather expensive) lessons years ago, but the lack of a mobile version meant I could only use it at home and not on the go, when I actually had time to spare. It seemed like such a no-brainier to me at the time. In a time where people were paying £300 for their retail software, they could easily have sold loads on the App Store. Now I use Duolingo multiple times per week on my phone and I wouldn't even think about paying for Rosetta Stone anymore.

bduerst 11y ago
Speaking of Rosetta Stone, their market cap is only $189m and they made $260m in revenue last year. I get that DuoLingo has a nice mobile interface, but do they have a larger marketshare than Rosetta Stone?

buster 11y ago

That's really good to hear. And it's a shame that such a company "only" raises $45M where Wunderlist gets 100-200 (i like Wunderlist but i think there is so much more value and potential in Duolingo!). I tried several Android apps for learning new languages and duolingo was by far the best, imo. Now, can i have German->Japanese in Duolingo, please? :)