How Duolingo Turned a Free Language App Into a $7.7B Business | WSJ The Economics Of

Duolingo has been the top education app in Apple’s App Store for most of the past decade, making the company a revenue of around $500 million annually. But most people who use the language lesson app do not pay. So how does a free educational app manage to have a valuation of $7.7 billion?

WSJ explains how Duolingo is using AI-enhanced experiments to subsets of its user base, tailoring its offering to hook users like an addictive video game.

Chapters:
0:00 Top education app
0:48 Growth and gamification
2:41 How the app works
5:47 Why the app is free

The Economics Of
How do the world's most successful companies generate revenue? In this explainer series, we'll dive into the surprising stories behind how businesses work--exploring everything from Costco's "treasure-hunt" model to the economics behind Amazon's AWS.

#Duolingo #Language #WSJ

[MrBelmont]

Some people do crossword puzzles or do social media for relaxation; I do two Duolingo lessons a day for the same reasons. After 2 years, I’m able to read French newspapers and magazines. That was my goal ✋🏻🇺🇸

[chengyiq]

A wise green Owl once said:
"Spanish or vanish"

[xMegaVideos]

It's so refreshing seeing a company being completely honest about their marketing scheme.

[Basic-wmuf]

I am surprised Duolingo hasn’t commented already.

[chunkemonke]

I watched the founder’s TED talk. There used to be a time where Duolingo learners generated revenue for the app by translating articles.

[beere_taran]

The owl will not stop haunting you until you finish your lesson

[samuchase]

Fun fact, it takes around 10 seconds to close and open the app again, so whenever they load an ad longer than that u can skip it

[sam.mankar]

I can understand the struggles Wall Street Journal had to face since Duo might've been pointing a gun at them.

[SVVolley]

Shout out to Duolingo for helping me pass Spanish class in high school!

[harriemeeuwis]

The greed to learn is completely opposite to the greed for money. Difficult to understand for Wall Street people.

[DominickSilva-tmxx]

Don't stop, your knowledge is priceless!

[palestinianperspective]

Lol, this video is basically just a rebranded Duolingo ad 💀💀

[googleGuy]

Duolingo is not an just an app. It's also an experience, a very comforting one at that.

[felixboden]

What Duolingo app really need is extra categories for learning grammatics and verb-conjugation-training. Also the vocabulary training is pretty bad. I stopped doing the next levels, because I realized to really learn the language I have to work on that first. So I just keep repeating levels to do the monthly challenge.

[rupel]

Compared to other big tech their practices seem surprisingly sustainable.

[endofsilence]

Looks like they are more into optimizing for people clicking stuff on their app instead of optimizing for actually learning the languages effectively

[synchronium]

"80% of users don't pay"
"8.6% of users pay"

That math doesn't math.

[lukecwolf]

I'm surprised to learn only 8% of revenue comes from ads. I hate the app for only teaching the introductory levels of a language, but the duo owl is good at marketing.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't want the merch.

[rosalieancheta]

I'm using this for more than a year, , it's so helpful.

[JapanesewithLulu]

I teach Japanese professionally and have my YouTube and website course dedicated too it. Even so, if people want an extra app I recommend them the free version of duo. I don’t really think they’ll learn Japanese from duo alone, but I do think it’s an easy way to get them looking at Japanese sentences and structure between classes in a gamified way ✨💪🏻