LingQ Discussion, Part 1

Steve: Hello, Mark.

Mark: Hi.

Steve: You know, this is an important occasion for us because we are launching the new version of The Linguist System and you are the one who designed it. I’m going to ask you a number of questions about it and I’ll offer my comments and I think that might be helpful for people who want to understand how our system works. We’'ve had The Linguist out for about four years for English. What to you are the major changes, developments, improvements that you have brought into the new system and where do you want to go with this?

Mark: Well, first of all, I don’t want to claim all the credit for it; really, it’s a combined effort. I mean, a lot of the concepts are similar to what we have in The Linguist, again, based on your experiences and trying to develop systems to meet the requirements that you had. Then we’ve taken that existing functionality from our current site and we think improved it in many cases. Although, in some cases it’s still the same as it was.

Steve: Let me just stop you there and we’ll have sort of a back and forth on this. The first thing is, you always say that however efficient some of our methods are for learning words and phrases, what’s fundamental is A: that people have fun with the system and B: that we are able to create a community around the system. Maybe you could talk a bit about those two things before we get into the actual functionality improvements that we have brought in.

Mark: Yeah, I think while we definitely believe that our system is the best language learning tool available by quite a margin, Steve: and our learners tell us that. Mark: Our members and learners tell us that, no question. Now that we are able to use the system in other languages with the new LingQ System, we can truly appreciate the system because before we spoke English so it was more difficult to be a real user.

Steve: I’ll just jump in too. A lot of people come to us from Global English, English Town and tell us how much more effective The Linguist is than those other and perhaps more famous systems.

Mark: That’s not to say that there aren’t people who like those systems better. I mean I’m sure, obviously, people that like our system like our system. Getting back to the question of the social interaction or the importance of the social interaction, no matter how good the system, especially when you are learning as an individual, to keep your motivation high and to make you want to continue to do what you need to do to improve, any social interaction that we can build in is only going to make it more fun. Right now in our current system where we get that social interaction is on the discussions, is on the Forum, is on any interaction that our members have with us here, whether it’s customer service or tutors tutors, especially, are a big part of the social interaction right now meeting other members on our discussions. We have our blogging community on Vox, which was quite successful there for a while. We need to do a better job of integrating into our main system, which we haven’t done yet but we will with our new LingQ System. I think all those things together, in addition to some of the other features we’ll be bringing on, will make the social part of our site that much better and in turn will motivate people to want to come back and to want to do the work and to want to interact and the net result of all that is, of course, that they’ll learn the language.

Steve: So, you have increased or sort of enriched the social interaction part of the new system. One of the other things I remember you saying was that a large part of what makes it interesting for people is the content; therefore, not only do we have to have interesting and entertaining content, but we’ve got to make the content look better. I think that’s been one of your major emphasis is to make it easier to find things. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what you’ve done to the content side.

Mark: Well, I think one of the things we have always recognized is that if we can get new members to start using the system, to start using it the way we want them to use it, they tend to stay. The biggest hurdle we have in attracting new members once, of course, they’ve found our site, in terms of keeping new members is getting them started; getting them to do the things we want them to do. Once the people start doing those things they start to enjoy it and they start to do better and so they continue to do it or to do those things. A big part of turning people on or getting them started is their first impression and if the first impression of the store is not that good, it’s kind of jumbled, it’s not quite as nice looking or as attractive as it could be, then we’ll lose some people there. What we wanted to do in the store was to make it look nicer, to offer easier access to content relevant to the learner or at least to his level, and so we’ve tried to do those things. We will continue to do more things to make the experience in the store better but, even now, it’s certainly more attractive and the items are presented in a better way. The information is more clearly displayed and there are sort of recommended items and and lists and so on.

Steve: I think you were inspired to some extent by successful examples such as Amazon or iTunes or other people who are offering, whether it be audio content, books, various forms of, basically, information, which is what the content is, entertainment, if you want, education, I mean, you’ve sort of looked at I think people are getting used to the idea that they can come on the Web and they can source this kind of material. In our case, of course, they do it because they are learning a language.

Mark: Right. And, of course, your message has always been, real interesting content on subjects of interest is motivating.

Steve: Right.

Mark: What we want to try and do is to have people come to our store, see all the stuff that’s out there and feel like I can’t wait to get going. Look at all this stuff. Where do I start?

Steve: One thing, of course, we should point out is while we call it a store, in fact, people aren’t buying the content per say. Some of the content there might be, if we want, copyrighted material, but they will buy the right. They will have to buy it if it’s copyrighted material, but then they would also have to pay some points under our system in order to integrate that. The main thing we are asking them to do is integrate that with our system. We will also have a lot of free content on there that we are, in fact, hoping that some of our learners will create for us or find for us.

Mark: Again, the majority of the content will be copyright free, but it’s the integration into our system that people will be paying for. If they want to read the content and listen to the content without using it in our system, it will be available somewhere else free of charge, Steve: from us. Mark: For those who want to use the content in our system that’s where it will cost them points. We haven’t fully fleshed out our points model yet, but I think the points model will enable us to do a lot of fun things and a lot of interactive things with our members. Obviously, they will be using points to purchase services, but they will also be able to earn points and I think that will be fun. As you mentioned, the ability for them to create their own content and I think many of our members have expressed interest in doing that. When they create their own content they’ll be able to earn points. If other people like the content and they select it from the store then the creator of the content will earn points. I think that will be quite neat and it’s something that you actually brought up years ago. You know, you’ve said that our learners will create content for us.

Steve: Yes.

Mark: It was just something we couldn’t do or didn’t focus on, but I think the whole user-generated content thing is quite big on the Web right now and it’s something that enables people to sort of feel a part of building something.