How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing • Hacker News Board

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#51

Post by dirktheman » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 11:06 AM UTC

philfrasty wrote: post #46

resoluteteeth wrote: post #4

The gamification aspects of Duolingo are a nice touch, but even if it didn't have this it would probably still be popular. I don't think there has to be some sort of "one weird trick" here. It's not perfect, but Duolingo 1) is free, 2) has no ads, 3) has both a website and apps, 4) is interactive with audio and voice recognition. There really isn't any competition to this. Lots of people want to learn languages; is i…

The only other (software) company I can think of in the language space with a recognized brand is Rosetta-Stone and it has traditionally been very expensive. Currently retails for a little less than 400€ (450$) for one language course on Amazon. So I think the user-value from a price-perspective is gigantic if you want to get into a language (not sure how deep Duolingo dives into the language though).

I took a Russian duolingo course, it was surprisingly thorough and well made. It teaches you the alphabet, basic phrases and a decent amount of grammar (verbs, tenses, prefixes), colloquial, etcetera. More than enough to get by in daily life, strike up a conversation and read some literature.

The website is very user-friendly, and the app has been designed specifically for mobile screens, so a lot less typing, and a lot more swiping.

It feels like a paid app, and I can't think of anything that comes close in value. If I were the CEO of RS I'd lose a lot of sleep over duolingo...

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#52

Post by ryporter » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 11:10 AM UTC

maroonblazer wrote: post #33

soared wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think marketing spend is the right term. They pay for marketing salaries, but had no marketing spend.

It's a distinction without a difference. They invested effort - time and money - into marketing activities. Whether or not those efforts were outsourced is immaterial.

There is a difference. You are lumping many aspects of starting a business into the marketing category. Identifying a market? That's one of the first things you do when you start a company. It's finding a group of people to market a product to. If that's marketing, then almost all aspects of a business are marketing.

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#53

Post by ommunist » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 11:20 AM UTC

The title is misleading. The very article is a clever piece of marketing. And it certainly cost something to someone to get it online. Perhaps the correct title is "without spending on advertising"?

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#54

Post by nonuby » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 11:30 AM UTC

newman314 wrote: post #24

I really wanted to use Duolingo but it appears that Japanese for English course is still not available (I would settle for just be able to speak and not read/write Japanese).

Would be awesome to see Thai available too..

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#55

Post by yodsanklai » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 11:46 AM UTC

I've been using Duolingo everyday for 2 months now (to learn Spanish). Some thoughts: It's entertaining. You don't need much motivation to "play" everyday. Whenever I want to procrastinate, I feel it's a better option than reading the news and so on... However, it's too simple (which is why it is addictive). By itself, it's not enough to learn a foreign language. It's a good complement, and a great way to get started though.

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#56

Post by SunShiranui » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 12:02 PM UTC

daveguy wrote: post #16

anaccountimade wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen Wanikani? It's the best! Before I used Wanikani, I was struggling to learn Nihongo, also known as Japanese to you non-anime experts. I was able to get my katakana and hiragana down, and I was also a pro at romanji, but I just couldn't get myself to study the kanjis! By the way kanjis are like the Japanese alphabet if you were wondering. Anyways, I spent 2 years working really hard on my Japanese listeni…

Well, we know wanikani is spending on advertising.

That post is so weird.

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#57

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 12:17 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #15

maroonblazer wrote: post #9

The title of the article belies its content. Several examples of marketing are cited: - They identified a market: people who want to learn a language as quickly, easily and inexpensively as possible. - They analyzed and understood the needs and desires of the target market. Presumably they further segmented the market. - They created an offering that met the needs of the segment(s) they were going after. - They delib…

And they created a product that is useful and fun to use.

[deleted]

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#58

Post by schakraberty » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 1:41 PM UTC

Having a marketing department to get the word out is very different from running expensive marketing campaigns through digital marketing platforms. The sense of the heading is clear enough - that building a good product and telling a cool story about it does more for your marketing than many paid campaigns.

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#59

Post by ionforce » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

aikah wrote: post #3

They got most of the Livemocha audience as the former turned to total sh--t. Livemocha used to be a great platform for learning. Then it was bought by Rosetta Code which sells expensive and obsolete language learning material.

What exactly was Livemocha? I heard a lot about it but by the time I did, they had already changed their site. What was their original approach that was so well received?

Re: How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing

#60

Post by masukomi » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 2:18 PM UTC

maroonblazer wrote: post #9

The title of the article belies its content. Several examples of marketing are cited: - They identified a market: people who want to learn a language as quickly, easily and inexpensively as possible. - They analyzed and understood the needs and desires of the target market. Presumably they further segmented the market. - They created an offering that met the needs of the segment(s) they were going after. - They delib…

Marketing: noun, the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.

The keywords there are "action", and "promoting". The first 4 items you list are not marketing. They are preparing for the market. The only thing there that is actually marketing is "They increased awareness and trial of their product via word-of-mouth" and that only barely counts because most of it is OTHER people marketing it for you, without your consent, control, or even input. So, it's not Duolingo marketing themselves. It's Duolingo's users marketing it for them. That's usually referred to as Evangelism and Guy Kawasaki has made his career out of explaining and promoting that idea http://guykawasaki.com/