{"id":339022,"date":"2017-04-22T00:22:01","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T16:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1479749"},"modified":"2017-04-22T00:22:01","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T16:22:01","slug":"duolingo-launches-paid-subscriptions-as-it-experiments-with-new-ways-to-monetize-its-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/duolingo-launches-paid-subscriptions-as-it-experiments-with-new-ways-to-monetize-its-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Duolingo launches paid subscriptions as it experiments with new ways to monetize its service"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Earlier this week, the popular language learning service Duolingo quietly introduced<\/a> paid monthly subscriptions in its Android apps.<\/p>\n

Subscribers get two benefits: they\u00a0won\u2019t see ads in the app and they will be able to download lessons for offline use. In addition, there is also a feel-good aspect to this, as Duolingo highlights that subscribers to Duolingo Plus, as the subscription is called, will help \u201cmillions around the world learn for free.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new subscription service,\u00a0which you can buy through an in-app purchase, currently costs $9.99 per month. It\u2019s live now on Android and will come to iOS in the future.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth stressing that this subscription is completely optional and a company spokesperson told me that \u201cDuolingo\u2019s learning content will always be free.\u201d<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: a Duolingo spokesperson tells me that the company expects to break even (or come close to it) by the end of the year and that the company has a \u201cfully fleshed out monetization plan.\u201d We have updated the headline to reflect this.<\/em><\/p>\n

About a year ago<\/a>, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn announced that the company\u00a0would start experimenting with ads and optional in-app purchases to figure out how each would impact app usage and the financial health of the company. At the time, von Ahn said that Duolingo was spending about $42,000 per day on its servers, employees and other operating expenses, a number that has surely increased over the last year or so.<\/p>\n

\u201cSubscribers will help keep language education free for millions of people around the world,\u201d von Ahn writes in this week\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n

Ads in an educational app are always a difficult tradeoff between monetization and user experience because they are, by default, designed to take the user out of the app. Von Ahn acknowledged as much. \u201cI don\u2019t like ads any more than you do, but we need to test if a small non-intrusive ad at the end of a lesson makes people use Duolingo less. (We know this would take us a long way towards breaking even.),\u201d he wrote a year ago.<\/p>\n

Now, however, it doesn\u2019t look like ads are going away anytime soon, because not seeing ads is, after all, one of the main benefits of paying for Duolingo Plus.<\/p>\n

The original idea<\/a> for monetizing Duolingo was to use the combined brainpower of its users to power a translation service. This service, however, remains in beta<\/a> after all these years and the company doesn\u2019t really highlight it anymore (and as far as I can see, there\u2019s not even a link to it from its homepage at this point).<\/p>\n