My Favorite Website

My Favorite Website

(Emery, 2021)

1. A brief history of the website, who started it, when, where, and why? 

According to Product Habits, in 2009, Duolingo was first launched for serving an academic project led by Luis von Ahn, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, and Severin Hacker, one of his undergraduates. They'd both personally observed the importance of effective language learning in different backgrounds. In Guatemala, where von Ahn grew up, learning English was prohibitively expensive. He noticed many people who wanted to learn English but couldn't afford it or couldn't find the ideal place to invest their money in for effective education. At the same time, Hacker grew up in a country where there are four official languages. As they shared the passion for language study, and the untapped market potential, they decided to develop a more global, accessible language learning option for people around the world. 

(Trung, 2020)

From 2009 to 2011, the duo had continuously attempted to promote “Duolingo” on several platforms. Meanwhile, the website has attracted investors on board. Before launching its prototype, Duolingo had backed with a $3.3 million investment from Union Square Ventures and Ashton Kutcher. According to USV, Duolingo's offer to funders has less to do with establishing a free educational tool and more about providing a long-term system for producing large-scale human translations of the website. In 2011, he relentlessly gave speeches on the website’s massive potential online collaboration for free language education. As a result, over 300,000 individuals signed up for Duolingo's private beta later that year as a result of von Ahn's TED lecture, which was viewed by over one million people. It was one of the few early kinds of marketing that Duolingo used for gaining attention and subscription.

(Smith, 2019)

Duolingo has apparently spun off users with only its experimental version, and a huge pool of people were queuing to try the real version. Taken from CMU (Carnegie Mellon University)’s Press, about 500,000 people around the world were expressing their expectations and excitement about Duolingo’s learning program, after doing the beta test- which pinned the fact on how the company was covering a huge market themselves. 

Duolingo's beta period concluded in June 2012, and the service was released publicly to everyone. The product was available in four languages at the time: English, Spanish, French, and German. After the release 2 year and ten months later, the website collected 250,000 active users per week, and 30,000 regular visitors (statistics from Vator TV). Lessons for learning new vocabulary were included, as well as translation assignments for practicing grammar and syntax. Finally, it was able to launch their first app in November 2012 and raised a total of $15 million as an investment. They began cooperating with other companies and selling the translated content that consumers contributed over the next few years, and according to Forbes, there were also deals such as BuzzFeed and CNN. This enabled Duolingo to continue to provide the program for free by subsidizing the cost of learning for users. In 2013, from USA Today, the app was awarded “App Of The Year” by Apple. 

( Shah, 2019)

In the upcoming years, Duolingo has made updates, along with new courses for learners, but still keeping the common denominator of free service for users. There were new features available that no other educational websites had ever done: bringing out Duolingo for Schools, increasing the accessibility and value of their programming in ways that consumers desired. According to TechCrunch, after just a few months in 2014, about 100,000 teachers had

signed up for their teaching. In the same year, the website reached 100 million worldwide users, and with funding money, they were able to expand the new premium subscription plan for users, while they could still access free courses for free like before. 

(Lee, 2018)

Now, Duolingo has been one of the most successful learning websites around the world, with over $1.5 billion revenue, with funding up to $138 million, with more than 200 employees and thousands of contributors in courses globally, according to Biz Journals.

(Torrance, 2019)

2. Who is its target audience? 

From Pin Learn, Duolingo’s customer segments are targeted towards people who have interest in learning languages around the world but are struggling with a tight budget to afford a traditional language course. With a hotspot/ internet provider and a Duolingo account, any person can learn different languages within their ability for free.

3. Facts and figures about how successful it is and how many users it has. 

(Curry, 2021)

(Curry, 2021)

With global contributors and high-quality content, Duolingo now has developed up to 38 languages with 95 different courses and levels. These included not just popular and well-spoken ones such as English, France and German, but also rare languages such as Klingon, Hawaiian and Navajo.

(Curry, 2021)

Duolingo has gained popularity and love from users around the world as a good tool for language learning. In the latest total, Duolingo had over 42 million users, either premium subscribers or free users.

(Curry, 2021)

While other language learning competitors are gaining about $400 thousand revenue (according to Rocketreach), Duolingo was far away and was profitable with $180 million revenue for its websites and apps. However, Duolingo also gains a prominent amount of funding per year, which is very impressive.

(Curry, 2021)

Besides having its own website, Duolingo has been available for IOS and Apple since 2012. Throughout the years, the app now is in devices of 500 million people in the world!

(Curry, 2021)

As mentioned, Duolingo has a significant amount of funding for the website as people are expecting it to develop more and having more people access to it for free education.

4. What is its unique selling point, USP? 

Duolingo offers courses in a variety of free languages and courses, and there are numerous other free features available in addition to the courses. It also contains languages that are not commonly used and at risk of extinction (such as Hawaiian and Navajo), which were playing a major part in saving idigenous traditions and languages. To add, as Duolingo has thousands of contributors around the world; therefore, the courses, articles are updated regularly and in the best quality and dedication, not by robots or automatic translation. 

(Kaur, 2019)

Fun fact: In December of 2012, there was a study by 2 PhD students in Queens College and University of South Carolina to prove how efficient and beneficial Duolingo is, compared to traditional learning methods. They found that one semester of language study at a university was proportional to 34 hours spent on Duolingo. It means that if you study on the website only 30 minutes a day, you will be able to learn and understand the language better in 68 days, instead of spending half of the year studying the same course.

5. Who are its nearest competitors?

Before Duolingo was found, there was a significant financial barrier to overcome when learning a new language. Rosetta Stone and Open English were the first software that allowed individuals all over the world to learn over 30 languages from the comfort of their own homes. The hitch was that even the most basic classes cost several hundred dollars.

(Rosetta Stone, 2009)

However, the designers of Duolingo, a language learning program, believed Rosetta Stone was capturing too tiny a market and developing a terrible business model. Rosetta Stone was only focused on a small segment of the language study industry, and they were asking a bunch of cost for it. The creators of Duolingo believed Duolingo would be the better choice. In the end, according to Google trends 2012-2015, it appears that the majority of the world now agrees with them.

(Shah, 2019 )

Nowadays, as learning online becomes much easier than before, Rosetta Stone isn’t it's only competitor. There are companies that noticed the holes and disadvantages of Duolingo, and they created similar websites that are said to be better than this website. According to Online Course Rater, these competitors are Babble Language Learning, LingoDeer, Busuu and Lingvist.

6. What do its detractors say about it?

 

According to Duolingo users’ reviews in Langoly, although Duolingo is excellent for beginning and intermediate language learners, but not so much for advanced speakers. The classes are also extremely repetitious, which can be tedious at times. Because of that, many felt unworthy for the money they paid for premium subscription. To add, their vocabulary sometimes aren’t always useful, which barriers learners’ skills of word choosing.

(Emery, 2021)

 

7. Why do you admire this website? 

Personally, I choose Duolingo as my favorite website because of its user-friendly, vibrant appearance, which motivates me to maintain my study streaks. The website also helps me to build a healthy hobby for myself during these pandemic times. 

Bibliography:

Emery. “Duolingo Review: Is Duolingo Effective?” Langoly, 19 Feb. 2021, Available at: www.langoly.com/duolingo-review. [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

Shah. “How Duolingo Built a $700 Million Company Without Charging Users.” Product Habits, 25 Feb. 2019, Available at: producthabits.com/duolingo-built-700-million-company-without-charging-users. [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

Ahn. “Massive-Scale Online Collaboration.” TED Talks, 6 Dec. 2011, Available at: www.ted.com/talks/luis_von_ahn_massive_scale_online_collaboration. [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

Loeb. “When Duolingo Was Young: The Early Years.” VatorNews, 22 June 2018, Available at: vator.tv/news/2018-06-22-when-duolingo-was-young-the-early-years. [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

Burnham. “Duolingo.” Union Square Ventures, 15 Aug. 2019, Available at: www.usv.com/writing/2012/06/duolingo. [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

Spice. “Press Release: Duolingo.Com Users Will Translate Web As They Learn a New Language - News - Carnegie Mellon University.” Carnegie Mellon University, 19 June 2012, Available at: www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2012/june/june19_duolingo.html. [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

N.P. (2009). Rosetta Stone. webarchive.org (online). Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20090831041414/http://www.rosettastone.com/learn-english/level-1-2-3. [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

Chang. “Duolingo: The Smartest Business Model in Education Technology.” Pinlearn, 17 May 2019, Available at: pinlearn.com/duolingo-smartest-business-model-education-technology/#:%7E:text=The%20targeted%20 audience%20for%20 Duolingo's,the%20traditional%20method%20of%20teaching. [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

Trung. “[WORLDKINGS] Top 100 nhà sáng tạo toàn cầu - P.44 - Luis von Ahn, Severin Hacker – Nhà sáng tạo ứng dụng Duolingo - nền tảng học ngôn ngữ phổ biến nhất thế giới.” HỘI KỶ LỤC GIA VIỆT NAM - TỔ CHỨC KỶ LỤC VIỆT NAM(VIETKINGS), 9 Sept. 2020, Available at: kyluc.vn/tin-tuc/nha-sang-nghiep2/worldkings-top-100-nha-sang-tao-toan-cau-p-44-luis-von-ahn-severin-hacker-nha-sang-tao-ung-dung-duolingo-nen-tang-hoc-ngon-ngu-pho-bien-nhat-the-gioi. [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

VESSELINOV, GREGO. “Duolingo Effectiveness Study”. Amazonaws, December 2012, Available at: https://s3.amazonaws.com/duolingo-papers/other/vesselinov-grego.duolingo12.pdf [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

Lardinois. “Duolingo Raises 15M Deries B Round Lead By NEA Will Expand To More Languages And To Mobile Soon.” TechCrunch, 17 Sept. 2012, Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2012/09/17/duolingo-raises-15m-series-b-round-lead-by-nea-will-expand-to-more-languages-and-to-mobile-soon/ [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

Graham. “Duolingo: Apple’s Choice for App of the Year.” USATODAY, 17 Dec. 2013, Available at: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/talkingtech/2013/12/17/duolingo-apples-iphone-app-of-the-year/4042469/ [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

Torrance. “Duolingo now worth $1.5 billion”. Biz Journals, 4 Dec 2019, Available at: https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/news/2019/12/04/duolingo-now-worth-1-5-billion.html [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

Curry. “Duolingo Revenue and Usage Statistics (2021).” Business of Apps, 6 May 2021,Available at:

www.businessofapps.com/insights/vacation-rental-mobile-app-development. [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

HeadRater. “4 Best Duolingo Alternatives [2021]: Duolingo Competitors.” Online Course Rater, 8 Mar. 2021, Available at: https://onlinecourserater.com/alternatives-to-duolingo-that-youll-love/ [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

Lee. “Duolingo Redesigned Its Owl to Guilt-Trip You Even Harder.” The Verge, 13 Dec. 2018, Available at: www.theverge.com/2018/12/13/18137843/duolingo-owl-redesign-language-learning-app. [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

Smith. “Human Computation Pioneer Luis von Ahn.” Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, 3 Apr. 2019, Available at: https://invention.si.edu/human-computation-pioneer-luis-von-ahn [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

Kaur. “Duolingo Review.” The Lingo World, 12 Dec. 2019, Available at: www.thelingoworld.com/review/duolingo. [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]

RocketReach. “RocketReach.” LingoDeer Revenue, n.d. Available at: https://rocketreach.co/lingodeer-profile_b47af0fffc3bf6ad [Accessed on May 30th, 2021]