

Verbling: The instant way to practice and learn a language - lobo_tuerto
http://verbling.com/

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modernerd
"Chat roulette for language learning" should be their five-word pitch.

Great idea. I've been learning French, Italian, and Spanish via lingq.com and
what it's missing most is the ability to practise live with native speakers
without having to schedule a call with a tutor.

It could prove a great way to practise a language, assuming they can work out
a way to police it. What's to stop it filling with the type of crowd that
frequents chat roulette, for example?

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rickdale
No, their five word pitch should not be "chat roulette for language learning".
That would imply lots of cocks speaking different languages.

I hate when a company is the something for something else. Be unique. How
about Video Chat For Language Learning. Why bring chat roulette into it? Break
free and then Chatroulette can become the Verbly for wanting to speak your
native language to another penis.

It just seems with all of the abuse that chatroulette gets it would be smart
to try and separate yourself from them.

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modernerd
_Why bring chat roulette into it?_

Because it's been a phenomenally successful concept that millions already
understand conceptually. And because it highlights their USP -- live, instant
matching of language partners -- when their competitors who use vanilla video
chat services require you to schedule online conferences.

'The something-of-something-else' pattern is incredibly useful as a means of
introducing new services and ideas. (My favourite is from Ronald Shusett and
Dan O'Bannon, who famously pitched the film 'Alien' as 'Jaws in space'.) Sure
-- you might take on the negative elements of the service you're comparing
yourselves with as well as the positive ones, but as long as you have answers
for those questions (e.g. "Good question. Our community is self-policing, and
we review and ban users who misbehave."), then I see little harm in it.

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barkingcat
Chat roulette is not as successful as you think it is, and no - if you just
say it to anyone on the streets, no one will understand what "chat roulette"
is - it has a connotation of gambling or being very risky (ie the roulette
thing billions of people understand conceptually, so your "analogy" will be
hijacked)

Is it a platform for gambling in different languages? Is probably the response
you'll get from "chat roulette for languages"

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zerohp
I'm going to disagree with you there. Occasionally I watch "old media" and for
a while Chat Roulette dominated both traditional and comedy news shows as well
as late night.

Many people on the street know exactly what it is: penises.

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5hoom
I hate to be 'that guy with a youtube link', but I think Trey Parker & Matt
Stone nailed what Chat Roulette means to most people:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gNyDZmQyeY>

Probably best if Verbling doesn't associate themselves with that ;)

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tmeasday
I've thought about this idea many times, and one idea I have had that I
haven't seen verbling talk about---perhaps it doesn't make sense yet with only
English + Spanish---is to run on a credit system rather than matching you up
with an 'opposite'.

So, if I want to learn spanish, rather than trying to find me a spanish-
speaker wanting to learn english for a 50-50 conversation, it just matches me
up with a spanish-speaker wanting to learn _anything_, and I burn credit
talking to them. Later I can earn credit by speaking to a _anything_-speaker
wanting to learn english.

If you think through that system lots of cool ideas come out, especially if
you attach a monetary value to the credit---like people only earning credit
and cashing it out (tutors), or people only spending it, and injecting cash
into the system (impatient/rich people).

Anyway, Verbling guys, you may have already thought of this, but if not, I've
been thinking about it for quite a while, hit me up if you want to chat more
about it.

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luke_s
Unfortunately I'm learning Chinese, which is not yet supported. But as I am
very interested in using verbling, I thought I would provide some feedback:

Firstly - Why do I have to register to use? It would be nice to specify your
language and jump in. Then if I enjoy the experience, I can sign up with my
e-mail address, etc.

Secondly - Having spent a bit of time around Asia, the market to learn English
is absolutely huge! A lot of people are desperate to practise English with a
native speaker. In Taiwan, sometimes had people (usually high school kids)
coming up to me in the street wanting to practise. However it will require
localised sites, written in Chinese, or Korean or Japanese to tap this market.
Also, it will need a different marketing strategy to what you might use for
English, or a European market. In China for example, a lot of people spend
most of their time hanging around on BBS's like MOP. For obvious reasons using
Google ad-words would be a no go ...

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jjolis
Jake/Verbling here. Thanks for this.

1\. The reason you have to register is because the people you talk to have the
option of adding you to "My Verblings" and thereby increasing your reputation
on the site.

2\. Thanks for your input on the Asian market.

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pkandathil
There is another site where you can do this. They actually take you teach you
the language. <http://www.livemocha.com/>

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wmblaettler
This is great! I would love to see school districts be able to sign up entire
classes and be matched with foreign classes. This feature would be a potential
source of revenue. Free for anyone to use, but added features for paying
schools: class matching system, teacher moderation, statistics, etc.

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pguzmang
There is another great resource: <http://www.fluentin3months.com/language-
hacking-guide/>

You can subscribe to his blog for free is really interesting.

Check the complete site out.

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jjolis
For a quick demo, Verbling was tried out on local TV in Texas
[http://www.the33tv.com/about/station/newsteam/kdaf-
verbling-...](http://www.the33tv.com/about/station/newsteam/kdaf-verbling-
live-chat-language-learning-story,0,5528260.story)

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sunspeck
Is it just me, or do the two faces paired in each image on the homepage all
look oddly similar?

If the software were to enforce this, I wonder if I would have a more
enjoyable/didactic/narcissistic experience speaking with my Chinese mirror-
image...

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kouiskas
"sign language" should be labelled as ASL if that's what you meant. There are
hundreds of sign languages.

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xlife
Great idea, kinda sad it has no Portuguese.

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unreal37
Yes, I would try it if it supported Portuguese.

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wccrawford
Heard about this a while back. Still waiting for them to support other
languages.

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stevelosh
This is a really cool idea that I can definitely see myself using. A few ideas
that would make it even more awesome (for me):

More languages would be great.

Let me specify the level I currently know a language at. For example: I'm not
a native speaker of ASL, but I can get through a conversation. I'd be a great
partner for an ASL beginner but not for someone advanced.

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jjolis
Hi, I'm Jake, one of the Verbling founders. Thanks for this feedback! We are
planning to launch more language combinations in the future, though Spanish-
English is the only one currently active. As we scale, we can allow users to
impose filters such as "I want to talk to advanced speakers only."

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yock
One thing that doesn't appear obvious to me is the level of proficiency
required (if any) to get started. I suppose that could be an expectation to be
set by the community, but is it feasible for someone to make Verbling their
first stop on the way to learning a new language?

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danvideo
Yep, there's not really a good explanation of what
beginner/intermediate/advanced means. Also it seems interactions are rated---
meaning what? Ability of speaker in said language? Interestingness of speaker?
Whether they are normal?

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jjolis
Jake from Verbling here. Beginner/intermediate/advanced refer to the different
levels of conversation topics available to users. You can click through all of
them while you're in a conversation, so you're never "stuck" in any of the
categories. Specifically, at the beginner level, you're exposed to mostly the
present tense and beginner's vocab. At the advanced level, you'll see some
conditional tense and more advanced vocabulary, for example re. politics,
culture, technology.

Re. ratings: We simply ask you, "How was your conversation?" Based on whether
you superlike/like/dislike, we can pair you up with that same native speaker
more often, at the same rate, or never again.

Hope this helps!

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machrider
Sounds like Colingo: <http://colingo.me/>

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bulletsvshumans
Do they let you filter your language partners by gender? Because otherwise my
girlfriend will not use this, even though she is very excited about the idea
in general.

She wants to work on her Hindi skills in exchange for English, but after
spending a year in India she is certain she will be mercilessly hit on.

My guess is that women in general will be uncomfortable having 10-minute chats
with random men.

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coatta
A "Teach for America" friend has recently been tasked with building a small
Midwestern charter school's first Spanish program. One of the biggest
challenges for her is finding ways to immerse students in the language with a
lack of resources and a tight budget. This certainly seems like a quick,
inexpensive and appealing way to get students engaged. I'll see if she can
provide feedback.

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arturadib
Just tried it out -- exactly what I was looking for. In less than a minute I
was practicing Spanish with a nice fellow from Mexico. Superb idea.

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jjolis
I'm Jake Jolis, one of the Verbling founders. Happy you found a good place to
practice Spanish!

Just for reference, biggest countries right now are USA, Spain, Mexico,
Colombia, Argentina, and U.K.

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eLobato
Jake, congratulations for the idea and the execution. Sometimes the simplest
idea is the one that changes the world. By the way, is there any reason why I
can't connect from Spain? It is stuck on the "connecting" screen :(

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jjolis
Aha, in the beginning as we grow our user base, we're scheduling sessions--
three times per day now. You'll see the session times announced in your local
time to the left of the video screen.

Just log on during the next session, which is at 9 PM in Spain. Just to make
sure, would you mind shooting me an email at jake@verbling.com from the email
account you signed up with? That way, I can take a look to make sure
everything's the way it should be.

And thanks for the kind words!

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jstclair
It's an interesting concept, but I'd think the video part would be more of a
distraction, honestly. The best language-learning idea I've ever seen was a
foreign-language MOO/MUD. I worked on one at the University of Bergen
(Norway). You can find a paper on the German-version here:
<https://bora.uib.no/handle/1956/1286>

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joeyj01
I agree with the video part. Let's say there is a weird looking guy/girl in
front of you and it can be very distracting. Only voice will be enough since
it is about speaking.

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rjack_
I disagree. If I can see the lips of my interlocutor I have a small help
understanding what he/she is saying.

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TillE
So it's language exchange partners, but over the internet.

Pretty neat, but I'd definitely worry about audio quality. If you live in a
multicultural city with a couple universities, the real-life version is easy
enough to set up.

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lobo_tuerto
And for the ones that don't have the financial ability to pay a top rated
course?

I think this service enables self taught people with enough tools to march
forward on their quest to learn a new language.

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wahnfrieden
You don't need to pay for a top rated course to find someone who's trying to
learn your language and vice versa, and meet up with them in person when you
live in a multicultural city as the parent said, with universities where there
are lots of young people eager to learn.

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jrvarela56
Another language learning tool by the creator of Captcha:

www.duolingo.com

check out a description at: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQl6jUjFjp4>

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koopajah
Yeah but it was announced a few months ago in this presentation a no real news
from it (i've subscribed as soon as possible to the mailing list)

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joshuabutner
I know I'm not the only person to say this, but I kind of prefer the
(original) implementation created by LiveMocha at <http://www.livemocha.com/>

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Zakuzaa
Someone should make a codecademy of langauages.

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dfischer
I love how www.livemocha.com handles this.

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JairusKhan
This is very cool. Especially for ASL.

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cipherpunk
Where's my Swedish option? :(

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arvinjoar
This. Finding Spanish speakers for an American can't be that hard, but finding
a Swedish speaker could prove much harder, they should prioritize languages
like Swedish.

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danso
Bummer...no French (yet)

This sounds stupidly superficial, but the page is configured (apparently) in
such a way that sharing it on FB gets you a blank for
title/descriptor/image...YEah, I know, superficial. But I wanted my friends to
know about it and you know what they say about click-through rate for articles
w/images...

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frew
Definitely not superficial. Sorry for the long delay, but this now fixed.
Thanks for the pointer. Let us know if you have any additional feedback.

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camslizzle
how about Indonesian?

