Verification Code inventor re-entrepreneurship: to replace the TOEFL with Duolingo

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Sina Science and Technology Pan

12 years ago, Louise Feng Ann (Luis von Ahn) changed the entire internet with a CAPTCHA (CAPTHCA), and 12 years later, he intends to use the language learning platform Duolingo to change more people's lives.

Louis is 34 years old and graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in the United States. As early as 2002, he and his mentor invented the verification code, which greatly hit the spam and malicious registration; Then he started the RECAPTHCA project, hoping to promote the electronic publication of ancient books and periodicals through the verification code; Now he has put all his energies into the Duolingo.

Duolingo (Chinese translated as "many neighboring countries") is a "fun" free language learning platform. Users can choose different levels of foreign language learning courses according to their own level. Complete each stage of learning, users can get virtual rewards, but also with friends online PK.

As Duolingo's founder and CEO, Lewis called the idea "gaming (gamification)". "It's hard to teach yourself anything," he said. We spend a lot of time making Duolingo fun to increase the chances of people using it. "he said.

In mid-May, Lewis came to China to publicize the Chinese version of Duolingo. In this version, Chinese users will be able to use Duolingo to learn English. In the future, Duolingo will also add more language courses for Chinese users.

Although the establishment has been 2 years, but Duolingo's team is not big, only 35 people, all in the United States office. Among them are 3 Chinese employees who work with a large number of volunteers from around the world to develop courses for Chinese users.

"There are a lot of people in China who are learning English and this is our chance." "said Louis. He has previously worked mainly in the United States, the special trip to China, and Non-stop to receive various media interviews to express the value of this market.

To promote localization, Lewis plans to first recruit a "national manager" in China, control Duolingo operations in China, coordinate with the App Store, listen to the users ' opinions and communicate with the media.

Before this, Duolingo mainly for western users, learners should at least master a mainstream western languages, such as English, French, can be based on this, learn Dutch, Spanish and other languages. In a new version released at the end of April, Duolingo first added support for Chinese, and this week will support another two weeks of Asian language, Japanese and Korean.

Duolingo does not just act as a language learning platform. Lewis's vision is to attract users through free courses, on the one hand, to the commercial web site to provide crowdsourcing translation services, on the one hand to explore the "Duolingo Test Center", and eventually replace the TOEFL (TOEFL) and other traditional exams.

The road to China

However, Lewis's company just stepped into the footsteps of China, encountered an unexpected embarrassment.

At the end of April, Duolingo officially released its Chinese version and attracted 1.5 million users in a week. But a lot of user feedback soon said that Duolingo's mobile apps were often disconnected or unable to connect to the network.

Lewis's team found that the software itself was not a problem, but that the user's DNS failed to connect to the server. There are about One-third affected users, most of which use China Unicom (14.9, -0.19,-1.26%) network.

Louis was very helpless. In an interview with Sina Technology, he repeatedly stressed that "this is not what we can control." But he is also considering moving some servers to China, fundamentally solving the problem.

In his view, Duolingo in China is facing two major challenges: first, network access is vulnerable to failure, users in other countries to visit Duolingo U.S. servers, while Chinese users may need their own servers, the second is the Android market fragmentation is very serious, communication costs are high.

"In other countries, we're going to do the Apple App Store and Google Play." But in China, you need to deal with more Android app stores. "said Louis.

This may be why the Android version of Duolingo has not yet supported Chinese. Lewis promised to fix the problem within the next three weeks.

He revealed that Duolingo is with the main domestic application store negotiations, including 360, Baidu, millet, peas, etc., hoping to be settled as soon as possible. "These stores are very interested and will not charge us any fees." "he said.

On the other hand, Duolingo is looking for partners in the country, responsible for content hosting and marketing and other work. But they have not yet considered working with schools and educational institutions, which often make special requests according to their own ideas, and Duolingo would prefer to provide students with a unified curriculum directly.

Replace the TOEFL

At present, the user learns a foreign language through Duolingo completely free. In the process of learning, a large number of users of the translated text will be summed up as a complete translation, provided to Duolingo's cooperative website, such as CNN. This is also the site's main current way of making money, that is, crowdsourcing translation services.

But in Lewis's view, providing translation services is far from enough. When he started Duolingo 2 years ago, he focused on translation in a Ted speech, but today he is more interested in the language learning function.

He plans to launch a new application called the "Duolingo Test Center", which provides standardized proficiency tests in languages such as English, with the ultimate goal of replacing traditional exams such as TOEFL. Users are required to pay 20 dollars for the test, which is much more favorable than the TOEFL 250.

Lewis that the TOEFL not only for the high price, candidates also need to travel from all over the country to a few cities to participate in the examination, transportation, accommodation costs are very high. "In developing countries, poor people take a TOEFL test, often costing one months ' salary." "he said.

By contrast, "Duolingo test Center" is not only the test fee for the TOEFL 8%, the examination is also very convenient. Users need only one smartphone to participate in exams anytime, anywhere. In addition, its question bank is very complete, the difficulty and the TOEFL equivalent. Lewis claimed the gold content of the two exams was very close.

However, to replace the more than 20-year history of the TOEFL, Duolingo first to obtain the approval of European and American universities and educational institutions. Lewis said that they had contacted many universities and that the feedback was very positive. "In the coming weeks or months, we will publish a series of schools that accept Duolingo tests," he said. "he said.

But Lewis admits it's not realistic to replace the TOEFL completely. "Both will be accepted by the university and we have a chance." "he said.

Up to now, Duolingo has 30 million registered users worldwide, with 12 million active users per week. Lewis's goal is to increase the number of users to 150 million. In this February's C round of financing, Duolingo raised 20 million U.S. dollars, the valuation has not yet disclosed.

Lewis wants to provide language education for more people through Duolingo. "There are 2 billion people around the world who can't get good education, usually in poor countries," he said. But in 10 years, many of them will have mobile phones, and teaching through mobile phones will occupy an important position, which Duolingo should do. The