Over the weekend an Owl icon blew up everyone's social feeds.
The owl is the DuoLingo owl.
Duolingo is the largest community of language learners on the planet.
Duo teaches language through short bite-sized lessons .
They're known for their iOS app but also get 80M visits a month on their site.
In a sec I'll list out the most popular languages being learned on Duo,
I have a feeling you'd never guess the #4 because it makes no sense.
On Duo, you set up a track for how you want to learn, then you get notified each day to keep your streak alive.
Learners on Duo:
- 44M Spanish learners
- 25.5M French learners
- 20.3M Japanese learners
- 17.3M Korean learners
- 16.6M German learners
They've done a fantastic job of gamifying something that's normally not fun.
People love the brand and create tons of content around the Owl.
If you do hit your streak?
If you didn't hit your streak:
People go nuts over their streaks:
According to their CEO, 60% of the users on the platform are learning a new language for fun.
For fun! Meaning they're on Duolingo instead of instagram.
What created the habit so far?
- Fun brand, low pressure
- Good notifications
- Widgets that are easy to understand
I began taking Spanish lessons over the weekend it's fantastic.
I'll be using Duolingo moving forward to both
- Learn language
- Understand how they made building this habit fun, so we can build similar practices into map.
This is a reminder that you don't need to take everything so seriously.
Duo has fun, and they get rewarded for it.
