

Verbling (YC S11) Links Up Language Learners With Native Speakers Through Video - mrkurt
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/08/verbling-links-up-language-learners-with-native-speakers-through-live-video-chat/

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augustflanagan
I built a similar site in 2009 focusing on Spanish/English exchange only
(<http://lenguajero.com>). I learned a lot of lessons from the whole
experience (like it's really hard to get people to pay for language learning
on the web). We have around 13,000 members these days, but we're still small
potatoes compared to livemocha.com or busuu.com.

I wish the verbling guys lots of luck with their new venture!

~~~
frew
Thanks, August! You all are definitely the other site that gets it when it
comes to language exchange. Looking forward to chatting with you as soon as we
have a bit of a breather.

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domodomo
Studied abroad twice in college, and have done a pretty good job of keeping my
language ability on life support via weekly face to face language exchanges
with native speakers. So I think this idea makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't
say they helped me learn anything, but it has helped me to keep from
forgetting.

It seems like this kind of system has a couple of markets. I think the reason
a lot of Spanish speakers are using it, is because they may already have book
learned the basics of English, but lack the day to day interaction. So that's
one segment. It seems like this site is a sweet spot for them.

But another segment probably not as well served would be people who are
completely new to a language. Most language partners won't have the skill to
introduce someone who has no background in it. So I think the uptake for these
kinds of language learners would be low.

One thing that would be really awesome is to consider integrating some kind of
learning curriculum. But the trick is if you had to supply curriculum for
every language, that won't scale well at all. Instead, consider the barefoot
language learning school of thought:

[http://www.amazon.com/Language-Acquisition-Made-Practical-
Le...](http://www.amazon.com/Language-Acquisition-Made-Practical-
Learners/dp/0916636003)

This book is out of print, but it's an amazing guide to learning any language
without a textbook provided you have a language partner.

Graphical dictionaries for language learners would also be super helpful:

<http://www.lexicarry.com/>

Also, for more advance learners who are already able to carry out basic
conversations, topic suggestions would be super helpful to keep the chat
flowing. You can only talk about your family for so long...

I looked to sign up but none of my languages are supported yet, otherwise
looks promising.

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jayx
It's funny that I came up with exactly the same idea this spring and was
almost going to apply for YC funding. But I changed my mind after talking to a
couple of my friends (international students who know more than one language),
most of them said it's a good idea but they also felt it's not very
comfortable for them to talk to strangers face to face (online). Another
challenge facing such kind of site is how do you motivate strangers to
actually teach each other languages while keeping their attention span long
enough, say, 5 minutes. Without a good motivation system verbling will just
end up being another video chatting site. I also couldn't find an easy way of
generating profit besides selling ads and charging user for talking to
professional language teachers. Maybe the site will build a reputation system
so the best users can get paid talking to other premium account users, and
site will take commission from each transaction. But in order to do that, you
need to have a big user base, after all it's a chicken and egg problem.

~~~
seanos
"not very comfortable for them to talk to strangers face to face (online)" -
this may be true of certain people but there are large numbers who will do
based on my experience of using a text and voice language exchange site called
sharedtalk.com. There are always many people there, particularly seems to be
Spanish (especially from Colombia for whatever reason) and Portuguese (almost
all from Brazil) speakers wanted to exchange with English speakers. Although
the text chat is most popular there, the users are often very willing to
exchange Skype names to use voice or video chat.

"how do you motivate strangers to actually teach each other languages while
keeping their attention span long enough, say, 5 minutes." - In my experience,
you do not actively teach each other the language, more just chat in the
different languages and correct and explain the mistakes your partner makes in
your native language. Thus, boredom after 5 minutes is not a problem, provided
you get along, especially with all the different cultural differences to talk
about.

~~~
jayx
I agree with most of the points you made, however, as ccarpenterg just said,
it's a sharedtalk for beautiful people, people who are introverted or not
confident about their physical appearances might not be willing to video chat
with strangers. In the first case you mentioned, were user willing to exchange
skype names before or after they had the text chat? The reason I am asking is
because text chat might make a very big difference in building the initial
trust between users.

~~~
seanos
This is an excellent point, I think you are right. On shared talk the number
of people in voice chat is always significantly lower than in the text chat
although once in text chat people often, after say 5 mins of chatting, ask to
move to skype for voice chat. Also, as a learner of Portuguese, I've noticed
that the Portuguese/English native speaker ratio is usually much high in voice
chat than for text chat which may be to do with the more extroverted nature
(in general) of Brazilians compared to people from English speaking countries.

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seanos
Initial feedback from using Verbling for 30 mins:

A feature of this site is the ability to instantly connect with a partner.
However, there needs to be a way to switch partners instantly. For example, I
was speaking to someone who had video and microphone problems and the only way
I could switch was to navigate back to the homepage and start again. I also
didn't find the automatic matching, in its current form, an advantage over
personal selection. For example, I only wanted to speak with girls around my
age. Allowing the user to set criteria for partners (e.g. age, gender, region)
would be useful, along with the ability to switch as desired.

The second key feature of this site, compared to alternatives, is the use of
video. However, I didn't find any benefits, e.g. in terms of usefulness for
language learning or fun, from the use of video over just voice/text
communication. Staring at the head of a stranger for the duration of the chat
didn't add anything. Need to add some feature or features that make the use of
video an advantage and relevant for language learning (this would also
encourage people who want to engage in video chat to simply switch to skype
once introduced).

I didn't find the suggested topics feature very useful, as it isn't hard to
come up with such topics on your own and simply going through suggested topics
one by one with partner led to a conversation that felt awkward and jilted. An
alternative idea: add some interactive role play puzzles that the users must
solve by speaking the foreign language with the user. For example, you could
shows a street map with a route shown to one user, and the same map with only
the initial position to the other. The latter user must then ask the other
user for directions to determine the correct route . Or a restaurant role play
where one user is the waiter the other the customer, and the latter is told
the dishes they must order, which they must communicate correctly to the
waiter. This would lead to more realistic, two-way, conversations, be a lot
more fun and be genuinely useful in generating conversation between two
strangers.

At the moment, it doesn't offer anything compelling over sharedtalk.com in
terms of finding language exchange partners, nor does it offer any of the
learning material for which I find Bussu useful. On the plus side, I did find
the site easy to sign up for and use, and the call quality was good (call
quality on sharedtalk is generally very poor, which is why, even in voice chat
there, people almost always suggest moving to skype - hence sharedtalk acts
more as an introductions agency).

~~~
frew
Thanks for the feedback, and thanks for trying out the site!

We've found, both in talking to language teachers and in our own experience,
that video helps communication and comprehension. However, it's definitely the
case that for both privacy and bandwidth reasons, sometimes it's a liability.
We don't require a webcam so for now you can just disconnect it if you're
uncomfortable with it, but we're planning to add an option to intentionally
omit the webcam feed in the future.

Thanks for the idea on topics; we've got a lot of ideas in that space, but we
wanted to launch as soon as we had a viable product.

Glad you liked the call quality, it's central to many of the features we're
hoping to introduce in the future. There's lots more coming. This is just the
first step. :)

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mrkurt
I love, love, love this idea. Enough that I'm going to inflict it on my kids.

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sachitgupta
Another awesome language learning project by Luis von Ahn (inventor of
reCaptcha): <http://www.duolingo.com>

Check out his talk from TEDxCMU: <http://tedxcmu.com/videos/luis-von-ahn>

~~~
jcampbell1
Do you have access to the product? I am very curious. The presentation demo
looked intruiging, but also limited to text which doesn't sound like fun. What
is the product like? Have you been using it? I was worried that it was
vaporware.

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jgfoot
Another site, mylanguageexchange.com, has a similar service for connecting
native speakers and learners, and it has a large user base. It has crude web-
based text chat built in, but many people just use the site to make
connections and then talk to each other via an IM service of their choice.

~~~
frew
Hey, I'm one of the cofounders. There are definitely a number of preexisting
options in the space. We think that having to search profiles and schedule
times is unnecessary work that takes up time you could be practicing your
language. It's really fun to just jump in and chat, and feedback has been
positive from users who have used both us and other language exchange sites.

~~~
jcampbell1
I agree. I have tried various language exchanges, and picking a partner and
scheduling things is an unnecessary distraction and time consuming. I am
looking forward to when you offer chinese. You should schedule it for the
evenings in the US, which is the morning in china.

One potential problem you will face is that the time spent on each language
needs to be balanced. I don't want to spend all my time teaching English, and
then have the person hangup on me.

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ashbrahma
How do you prevent chatroulette type activity from happening?

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mopatches
Very cool, congrats guys!

Rosetta Stone does something like this already - in addition to learning the
language you can engage in peer-to-peer or peer-to-teacher live instruction
through the software. It matches you based on language level, etc. The cool
part about the peer-to-peer interaction is that it's with someone equally
dedicated to learning the language, since they also bought the software and
engaged in a bunch of lessons. Of course, Rosetta charges for this service.

What does Verbling offer that Rosetta doesn't - is it
easier/faster/cheaper/etc?

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revorad
I hope they don't riddle their site with crappy ads and upsells like all their
competitors. A lot of people spend money on language learning, so if you make
a good premium product, they will buy.

~~~
seanos
"I hope they don't riddle their site with crappy ads and upsells like all
their competitors" - I'm not sure about all competitors but I've used both
Bussu.com and SharedTalk.com and neither of them have these problems. In fact,
the latter has no ads or upsells at all.

~~~
revorad
Just tried busuu.com again and it's showing me ads for taps and office chairs
- just what I'm looking for on a language learning site!

I didn't know about sharedtalk.com. Looks like it's made by Rosetta Stone. The
sign up form is like a mortgage application. Why does a language learning site
need to know my gender, birthdate and address?

~~~
seanos
I think gender and birthdate are important information for selecting a
suitable partner. For example, I prefer to speak to females around my age,
rather than males or females who are much younger or older, as I find it more
interesting to chat to them. It doesn't ask for your address, just your
country and city (I'm pretty sure city is optional), again information that is
often useful when picking an exchange partner (for example, the Spanish spoken
in Spain has certain differences to that spoken in Mexico - usage, accent,
slang etc).

I didn't realise Bussu showed ads since I use Adblock but I agree that the ad
they are showing you would be annoying.

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mgurlitz
The Chatroulette connection is particularly interesting since Verbling could
achieve what Chatroullete tried and failed at. Chatroulette's founder, who
learned English from online video chats, supposedly got his idea from
interactions with foreigners and other cultures in a tourist shop in Russia:
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/17/100517fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/17/100517fa_fact_ioffe?currentPage=all)

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danirus
Few months ago I launched (yet) another website to find people with whom to
speak a foreign language: <http://witmeet.com>.

I have not done any publicity so far. The target is different than Verbling.
The main idea is to find people around your location and meet in-person.

Witmeet is still under development as I'm the only developer, you know, the
pain of finding co-founders.

All the best for the Verbling Team!

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gms
I wonder if they will eventually turn into a dating site.

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seanos
From one of the drop down menus on the sign up form: "I speak español"

It should be either "I speak Spanish" or "Yo hablo español" surely?

~~~
frew
Yeah, sorry about that. Fixed.

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iamwil
I know my friends in Japan would like this. They often go to language meetups
to practice their english.

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ccarpenterg
It's like SharedTalk but for beautiful people.

