Has any of you tried Pimsleur and Assimil?
I'm learning French, Hebrew and Russian, and so far it has been great.
Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
151–160 of 189 posts
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#152Earlier 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.
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.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#153I was hoping to find Japanese last time I checked their site. Any good way to learn it?
I don't have any particularly good resources for grammar, but to learn the writing system and some vocab, I would recommend [1].
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#154Since 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?
Trying to lean dative case with Duolingo make me quit.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#155This 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…
But are these guys making money from solving the problem. Seems like its a free service and they are balking from chasing the profitability route. From the article
>>>> “The reasoning for this was that, though we could make it a profitable business, we realized we’d quickly become a translations business as we’d have to hire people focused on quality control, sales people, etc. and eventually businesses tend to pay more attention to the parts of the company that are profitable,” a spokesperson told us.
“We are an education company and are here to help bring education to everyone in the world and to make education more effective.”
Good intentions but does not seem to support your key point or am I mistaken?
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
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.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#157I was hoping to find Japanese last time I checked their site. Any good way to learn it?
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.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#158Here's a little web app I made for practising French verbs:
http://practicefrenchverbs.com/
The code is on GitHub: https://github.com/euoia/node-reverb
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#159I 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 used similar materials, and I found The Foreign Services Institute's course workbooks (1989) [0] as a helpful supplement for learning Spanish – and they have courses for 37 other languages, all free (PDFs and MP3s).
They courses were intended for international diplomats preparing for exams or relocation that require (at the least) conversational proficiency in their destination's local language. So, you learn the basics as quickly as possible without compromising understanding for rote memorization.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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 appe…
> 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.