ReadLang bought by Duolingo

[crush]

I'm excited to announce that Readlang is now part of Duolingo! While creating Readlang, I looked up to Duolingo as an example of a great online language learning product. I felt that if I ever sold Readlang it would have to be to a company I really trusted and respected, and Duolingo would have been my first choice. Now that I've been working at Duolingo for the past one and a half years, my opinion has only strengthened. They are great at creating and growing beautifully designed, addictive learning apps, and are a perfect fit for Readlang.

There will be no interruption or change to your Readlang premium account. Readlang will continue exactly as before. There'll be a few hours of downtime on Nov 16th while we transfer the service to Duolingo's infrastructure but other than that everything will continue as normal.

What does this mean for the future of Readlang? For now I'm busy working on Duolingo Stories (please check it out!) so don’t expect any major developments in the short term. In the longer term, I'm hopeful that we'll develop Readlang further and help it to reach a wider audience. I still believe that it's a very useful tool for intermediate and advanced learners.

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch.

Good luck with your language studies!

Just saw a link to a post on Reddit mentioning this. I wonder what this means for Duolingo? Plans for more advanced courses?

[Tofu]

This is distressing. I, too, suspect that they bought ReadLang to close their competitor, not to improve it. ReadLang has been one of my favorite language learning tools. It automates the flashcard process which means we can spend more time learning a language and less time learning Anki.

[crush]

Steve's been working for/with Duolingo for a while now, so i don't know. I'm not really sure what Duolingo has in store for ReadLang, but you're right, it is possible that it will turn into something closer to the Duolingo Stories (ie. all curated content, no personal content). But it's also possible that it'll be used as a replacement for the old immersion section at Duolingo. In any case, Duolingo has a lot more resources/manpower to really supercharge ReadLang, whether that'll happen or not is yet to be seen, however...

I don't use ReadLang much anymore even though i've got a lifetime free membership. I just don't like reading on the computer that much.

It automates the flashcard process which means we can spend more time learning a language and less time learning Anki.

Ah, that is a good point, when i last used ReadLang frequently it was to help facilitate making Afrikaans cloze sentence cards for Anki, for which it works really well and is very convenient. I can see these features disappearing in the future. Though i'm not sure if they are trying to integrate it or keep it as a separate project (like their "TinyCards").

[aokoye]

I also got that email this morning. I suspect that this was a survival mechanism for ReadLang given that I feel like I remember reading that Steve was purging money on it. We'll see what this means for ReadLang though. Hopefully it won't go the way of LiveMocha.

[galaxyrocker]

Considering DL is not even in the black (last i heard; could've changed with ads), I don't see how this is really all that wise on their part, either.

[Cainntear]

I think it was pretty much inevitable -- you can't own a company in competition with your employer. I didn't expect the status quo to last, and I suspected something like this would be announced sooner or later.

It could even be that the job was basically a probationary pre-buyout thing, with the condition of "leave Duolingo or sell Readlang to Duolingo after X months". If so, well, good for him, and good on Duolingo. I can't think of any other companies who'd be likely to let someone work for them for a year as due dilligence for a sale.

It's a good reminder that just because a company is big and backed by millions upon millions of venture capital, and just because their product is on the acceptable side of "meh", it doesn't mean the people behind it aren't well-intentiioned people.

And as foir DuoLingo not being in the black -- that's nothing new. They were born as a free platform with a dubious projected future revenue stream, and I don't think buying Readlang is a major part of their balance sheet.

Alternatively, they may be looking at Readlang as the way into money -- content is expensive, but if they're planning to partner with major content partners for a premium service, it just might work.

[aokoye]

Considering DL is not even in the black (last i heard; could've changed with ads), I don't see how this is really all that wise on their part, either.

Honestly I was thinking about that earlier today as well. I suspect DL has significantly more funds than ReadLang does and that ReadLang was in pretty dire straits, because yeah, it's not the financially healthiest of decisions for DL, or at least it doesn't seem like it is.

[dgc1970]

It seems to me that 99% of Duolingo users have never even heard of Readlang. That's a lot of potential customers that could be reached without a single dollar being spent on advertising. "Complete your tree and get one free month of Readlang!". It seems like a natural progression for their customers no matter where the actual content comes from. LingQ is probably watching this closely.

[Stefan]

I remember reading articles many years ago about how Duolingo were supposed to make money by getting users to translate the web for free. I haven't used Duolingo in a long time but I believe they temporarily gave up the idea.

Monetizing crowd-sourced translation did not work out, and the "immersion" that was supposed to lead to that is not available in an obvious way to new members, and is seemingly not available to old ones as of today-- though it could just be that it is down. The revenue models now are based on offering cheaper testing to certify users in (for now) their English speaking/reading/writing abilities, and also they've begun having ads.

Maybe this is a step to resurrect the old idea. Or it's just a transfer of ownership so the owner doesn't have to fund Readlang by himself. Hosting it is a small thing for Duolingo so they can probably do it just for fun.

[neuroascetic]

Hosting it is a small thing for Duolingo so they can probably do it just for fun.

I am skeptical that this will be good for a daily Readlang user like myself. However, if Duolingo put a good faith effort into improving Readlang, they have enough resources to do amazing things with it.