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

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

#141

Post by aphedox »

Balgair wrote: post #54
orthoganol wrote: post #51

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.

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.

They offer cyrillic with the new Ukrainian course.

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

#142

Post by copsarebastards »

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…

> Duolingo needs to provide better user control of the spaced repitition input and some setting for the skills practice sessions.

I disagree. I think what Duolingo needs is to do a better job of automatically detecting people's personal spacing and on which words (this isn't a trivial problem, BTW). Putting this burden on the user means that the user spends a lot of time tinkering with the platform instead of actually learning the language. This is a problem I ran into with Anki.

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

#143

Post by ajkjk »

NhanH wrote: post #138
beejiu wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is arguably the best way to learn the language; after all, it was the way you learned your first language. I think a great deal of people find 'theory' boring, and would otherwise not be interested in learning a language. Duolingo is fun and practical.

> It is arguably the best way to learn the language; after all, it was the way you learned your first language It took me ten years to be as proficient as a ten years old kid in my first language. So I don't think the way we learn our first language is necessary the best way to learn language in general.

You were also pretty dumb at the time, and not trying to learn it very actively.

And, I would say I was passably proficient by about 7. At least enough to read relatively simple non-picture books.

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

#145

Post by ecdavis »

beejiu wrote: post #136
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?

It is arguably the best way to learn the language; after all, it was the way you learned your first language. I think a great deal of people find 'theory' boring, and would otherwise not be interested in learning a language. Duolingo is fun and practical.

> it was the way you learned your first language.

Duolingo is almost exclusively focused on translation, which is absolutely not how most of us learned our first languages.

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

#146

Post by learnstats2 »

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 anything, my criticism would be in the other direction. The sections are too narrowly grouped in terms of theory.

I have a non-fluent understanding of what "subjunctive perfect" means in my home language, but I guess I deal with it OK.

As such, I don't find it valuable when I see that section on Duolingo and think "OK, it's subjunctive perfect time!"

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

#147

Post by rokhayakebe »

smaili wrote: post #3

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

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.

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

#148

Post by Balgair »

copsarebastards wrote: post #140

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…

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.

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

#149

Post by Balgair »

aphedox wrote: post #141
Balgair wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They offer cyrillic with the new Ukrainian course.

Fantastic new, I'll have to try it out then and see!

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

#150

Post by learc83 »

Balgair wrote: post #148
copsarebastards wrote: post #140

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…

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.

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