Verbling: The instant way to practice and learn a language
verbling.com
verbling.com
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?
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.
The meaning I obtained was exactly what he initially meant. A place where you can be hook up to another person in the world, but with the explicit intention of practicing a language that's foreign to one and native to the other.
There is no shame in piggy-backing anyway, wasn't even someone famous who said: "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants."
Not saying that chatroulette is a _giant_ per se, but what they did in so few days was, well, a giant achievement (news, users, concept).
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.
Is it a platform for gambling in different languages? Is probably the response you'll get from "chat roulette for languages"
Many people on the street know exactly what it is: penises.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gNyDZmQyeY
Probably best if Verbling doesn't associate themselves with that ;)
At the risk of appeal to authority:
"In fact, I explicitly tell YC startups to explain themselves to investors as "the x of y" whenever possible."
-pg
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1216008 http://www.paulgraham.com/investors.html (see point 14)
"The x of y" can be okay for consumers too, but only a select few brands are familiar to mainstream consumers. e.g. " Facebook for businesses" or "Google for real estate" work.
Penis aside, ChatRoulette too obscure for most people and especially a long time after its peak.
While I'm with you on the concern with the tainted associated, I couldn't disagree more with the above sentiment. Conveying something in a few words incredibly powerful and incredibly hard... Starting with something your audience is familiar with is an incredible asset.
It doesn't cheapen the movie "Alien" to pitch it as "Jaws on a spaceship". (hat tip to the book "Made to Stick").
Re. abuse: Verblings make accounts and that carry a crowdsourced reputation. We can see how well-liked our users are based on how their conversation partners rate them. Users with serious abuse reports filed against them are investigated and, if substantiated, kicked out.
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.
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 ...
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.
You can subscribe to his blog for free is really interesting.
Check the complete site out.
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...
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.
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!
For beginners, we've built beginners conversation topics to provide some initial Spanish context to get you started. Click the "Beginner" button once you've got a native speaker on the other end.
My co-founder Mikael actually knew zero Spanish before the summer but just started using Verbling to learn (and get feedback). He's now very conversant, at the stage where I can hear him use phrases that real Spanish speakers would use in everyday life, which is often very different from what they put in textbooks.
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.
Just for reference, biggest countries right now are USA, Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and U.K.
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!
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.
I think this service enables self taught people with enough tools to march forward on their quest to learn a new language.
www.duolingo.com
check out a description at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQl6jUjFjp4
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...