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

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

#181

Post by Balgair »

alaskamiller wrote: post #156
sah2ed wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you don't need a Google account to consume content on YouTube (yet), but without a Facebook account and a decent number of friends, there would be no impulsive need to check your news feed on Facebook.

That was how Facebook used to work but now they're basically an RSS reader, the sources being either your friends published content or anything and anyone else for that matter.

Good call! I had not thought of FB as that, but you are right. I guess the next step for them is to then try to transition into a bank or some other enterprise that tracks and stores value. That usually seems to be the way these things go.

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

#182

Post by copsarebastards »

learc83 wrote: post #150
Balgair wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thin…

>Customers are people watching Why do you classify youtube watchers as customers and facebook users as capital? The vast majority of youtube's revenue is from ads, so to me that says that youtube is in the same category as facebook.

Agreed. I do think YouTube will survive whatever collapses come, because they hold too much of a monopoly on video to fail (something similar goes for Facebook). But their profit model is still that of a social media company.

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

#184

Post by emergentcypher »

Balgair wrote: post #56
emergentcypher wrote: post #34

Still waiting for their Russian course!

Any word on getting over the hurdle of using another alphabet on english keyboards?

Unfortunately you just have to suck it up and learn the layout. If you have a mechanical keyboard you can buy replacement keycaps with both Latin/Cyrillic characters. Otherwise, you can get a set of stickers to put on your keys.

Or just learn to touchtype off the bat.

Depending on your OS, you can also use a phonetic keyboard layout instead of the standard Russian one, but I really strongly recommend learning the standard Russian layout.

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

#185

Post by emergentcypher »

mhartl wrote: post #91
Symbiote wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

You can add Russian as an input language and use a keyboard shortcut to switch between Russian and English (usually alt+shift or super+space), and then it's just a matter of learning the keyboard layout.

If you're learning Russian, you have to learn a new alphabet anyway, a new layout isn't that much more trouble.

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

#186

Post by mercer »

jfoster wrote: post #164
shkkmo wrote: post #25

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 t…

> 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. Do you know what you know, though? It's easy to spend an hour practising a bunch of words and feel as though you've learnt some of them, but come back a week or month later and actually not be able to recall them.

Some Spanish words are almost exactly the same as their English or Dutch equivalent, in which case I really don't need them repeated. I think this is the case for others too.

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

#187

Post by mercer »

probably_wrong wrote: post #84

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?

However, it's important to realize that Duolingo's approach is intentional, and one also used by Rosetta Stone and many (most?) language schools and teachers. It's proven to be very effective.

That said, especially for German I would've liked more theory too. And some people just seem to have a preference for learning in a more formal/theoretical way.

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

#188

Post by toupeetape »

fidz wrote: post #167
probably_wrong wrote: post #84

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?

If you ever use Rosetta Stone, they call it "Immersion Method". They says we can learn anything as we can learn them when we were a child. We don't study grammar etc when we learned our first/mother language.

Learning another language as I learned my first would mean hiring two native speakers to act as my parents, some more native/fluent speakers to act as my primary school teachers and a bunch of non-natives learning the language at the same time as me to act as my friends. Together, they would need to surround me for the majority of my waking hours and after 10 years, I would still be incapable of reading anything more complex than Harry Potter.

Of course, we do study grammar in our own language. We do it at school.

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

#189

Post by alaskamiller »

Balgair wrote: post #181
alaskamiller wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was how Facebook used to work but now they're basically an RSS reader, the sources being either your friends published content or anything and anyone else for that matter.

Good call! I had not thought of FB as that, but you are right. I guess the next step for them is to then try to transition into a bank or some other enterprise that tracks and stores value. That usually seems to be the way these things go.

They already are. They're an identity store.

You leverage your facebook profile to gain access to properties, be given permissions or access, and your value is measurable by the input output of your usage.

Travel around the world right now and show either your government identification or a printed copy of your facebook profile and wouldn't it be weird if a young person you meet takes more credibility from that printed page than the validity and authority of your government id?

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