LingQ 5.0 | What You Should Know (1)

Hi today, we're doing something a little different.

Steve Kaufmann here, of course, along with my son, Mark.

And for those of you, for those of you who don't know, mark is the CEO of LingQ.

He's the one who decides what we're going to do.

He organizes people on five continents that work for LingQ, you

know, programmers, designers and...

a great team of people and so forth.

And, uh, so I'm very excited today to be able to interview Mark or he

interviews me and we talk about LingQ 5.0, which has finally finally launched.

It was launched on the mobile app a little while ago and now

it's launched on the browser.

Mark, could you maybe introduce some of the things that are in LingQ 5.0?

Oh, sure.

I mean, obviously we just finally pushed our web version a few days ago.

And so it's obviously, there's been a lot of, uh, discussion on the forum.

We had the iOS of course version has been available for

probably a month and a half now.

Android also has been released more or less recently to most users, uh, in the,

in the, at the same time as the web app.

So, um, there are a lot of comments on the forum.

Some people really like it.

Some people are having trouble, uh, getting used to it, uh, as always

happens when, when changes are made to any, any software product.

Um, obviously we're aware that, um, for those people who really liked the way link

4.0 worked, uh...some love the change.

Others are wondering why we made changes.

And so we thought it'd be a good opportunity to explain why we did

some of the things we did and what some of the benefits are to version

five that, that probably may not all be, um, obvious right at first blush.

Well, what, what I'd like to start in with is I am very enthusiastic about

LingQ 5.0, and I'm more of a user.

Mark is the one who put a lot of thought together with his team

and do what we should have there.

What I see with LingQ 5.0 is it's sort of like a new start for LingQ it's, it's a

more exciting way of getting at content, better organized, um, more motivating.

A platform which allows LingQ to develop new functions.

It's it's a totally new product.

That's not immediately obvious to people.

So, um, I'm excited about it, but I think it would be worthwhile to hear from Mark

in some detail about some of the things that are there, but bear in mind that

you have to get in there and use them.

Overcome the strangeness of new features in order to fully appreciate the extent

to which this is really a much more powerful way of learning languages

without realizing that you're learning.

And I, that's what I take away from LingQ 5.0.

Uh, absolutely.

And I think when we started to, to make LingQ 5.0 in effect, uh, worth

pointing out that version five, unlike version four is, is, um, the core

components of LingQ on the web were completely rewritten from scratch,

which we haven't done in a long time.

And, and both the mobile apps were also more or less rewritten from scratch.

So, uh, significantly different than when we went from version three to

version four, uh, and, and a big part of the reason why was we, we wanted

to have a more stable platform that, uh, that was easier to develop upon.

I mean, the fact is that LingQ's been around a long time and we've had a lot

of versions and, uh, you know, as you evolve and iterate there ends up, it

ends up being tougher and tougher to, to improve upon what's there before.

Things have been built on top of other things, which were

built on top of other things.

And so at a certain point, we needed to have a fresh start.

Um, when we then went to do that, it gave us an opportunity to look at a lot of the

things that we have done over the years, uh, and to try and kind of streamline

things and, um, make things clear, both functionality wise and in the way that

some of the things work on the site.

So I know that one of the things you're quite excited about these

days is the coins, uh, and how are our goal for maintaining your

streak is no longer measured, uh, or set in, in terms of LingQs.

But in fact, set in terms of coins, you can earn coins by

creating LingQs, moving words up in status, um, reading and listening.

So there, there are many more ways of earning coins and, and so that, uh,

well I'll, maybe I'll let you continue.

Well I mean any of you who have followed my YouTube channel you know that I often

use this metaphor of the, uh, racing dogs who chase a mechanical rabbit.

And anytime you can create something that people are keen

on doing for whatever reason...

uh, so they're chasing this thing.

And as a result, they're learning.

So uh, to me having coins, which you can't, you can't buy anything at the

grocery store with the coins, but these are points that accumulate.

And in the past, you know, if I was only getting credit for say creating LingQs,

but I was going through a period where I wasn't creating new LingQs because I was

reviewing old material, or I was doing a lot of lists, or I was moving some of

my status two or three words to known.

Uh, I was getting no credit for that.

Whereas now it's sort of merged into one single unit that we follow coins.

And so if I had, as I have now done, uh, I'll go into my vocabulary list and

I will select out status three words and I'll move a lot of them to known.

And I get lots of coins for doing that.

And whereas I'm normally washing the dishes and listening now I'm

also getting coins for listening.

And in fact, I don't know all the details, but a wider range

of activities generate coins.

And so you follow your progress and your activity level, but

it's not limited to just a couple of things like creating LingQs.

And I find that strangely motivating.

The coins is one area where we try to, to make things easier

to understand for people.

Um, you know, in, in the past we've had the activity score.

We've had the activity apple, we had LingQs target for

your streak, we had coins.

So, as I say, in terms of simplification, what we've done is we've, we've now

gotten rid of the activity score, which used to be the measure of how

active you were for the last 30 days.

Uh, and that determined the color of your activity apple, uh, we've done away

with the apple and that activity score.

And instead we're, we're just gonna use coins.

So we're again, trying to simplify.

Based on the number of coins you've earned in the last 30 days, your

streak indicator will also change color like the activity apple did before.

So just a small example of, of a place where we tried to kind of make things

simpler because the reality is for new users, there was a lot to learn.

And, and so, yeah, we, you know, the danger in software is always to

keep building stuff and new features and feature creep, as they say.

And so here, we're trying to, trying to declutter a bit, um, make things

less intimidating for new users.

And at the same time, trying to, as you say, have more activities count towards

exactly the measure that, that, that, that you're trying to move the needle on.

I mean, it's, to me it's so important to, to be active with the language.

That's the number one thing.

I mean, we will progress more quickly at some times, or for some languages

than with others, but if we're, if we're active, we're going to get somewhere and

enabling, sort of, encouraging us to be engaged in a number of different kinds

of activities, and we'll see later how it's become easier now to do a variety

of things where you are engaged with the language, moving forward in the language,

getting credit for this and your coins.

And I think that's going to motivate more people and keep them more

active with sort of less frustration.

So I'm quite excited about that.

We've also made some changes to the way we track listening and reading.

Um, so we're no longer...

it used to be that you had to finish a, a reading, a lesson, and then you

got credit for having read it one time.

And just like when you were listening to the audio, you got credit.

If, and when the audio file finished playing, you got credit

for having listened to at one time.

Whereas now we're tracking in real time.

So, so anytime you listen, it's being tracked.

And if you listen for 30 seconds, then you'll see 30 seconds added

to your listening, uh, right away.

You know, obviously when you're measuring coins for your daily streak,

there's no point giving you credit for listening to, uh, uh, or reading

a lesson when it takes you a week.

And we give you credit for having read it on the seventh day that doesn't

help you on the previous six days.

Uh, it doesn't contribute to your coins goal.

So we track in real time now.

One thing that has improved is the ability to time-stamp in sentence mode.

And so I've been listening to this, uh, you know, in sentence

mode, this Jordanian, uh, you know, Levantine Arabic cartoon series.

And very often, you know, it just seems like they cut off, you know,

at the beginning of the, whatever it was, it seems like it should

have started half a second earlier.

It should have gone on a half a second later or two a second later.

Uh, every time I listen to it, I'm listening to it over and over again,

in order to capture just when that particular audio that corresponds to

that sentence, you know, what is the actual audio snippet that I want there?

And every time I listen, I'm listening.

And so, again, it's this idea that I'm sort of induced to, to get involved in

these other activities, for whatever reason, because I want to capture the

accurate sound file, which by the way, anyone who comes after me will benefit

from, but as I'm doing that, I listen to it three or four times, I'm listening.

And so it's just another example of how we do things for a variety of reasons.

But the net effect is we're more active in the language and we're learning.

And the fact of the matter is changes that we made related to timestamping uh, here,

we're talking about editing a sentence.

So when you're in sentence mode, there's an option to edit the sentence.

Uh, that in itself I think is a significant improvement.

And maybe particularly for like, I'm studying Japanese right now so

particularly when you're studying Japanese, you, you very often want to

edit incorrect word splits uh, something that can't be helped in the end.

Um, so it's easy.

Edit that sentence, make a quick change, save that sentence, keep LingQing.

Whereas before you had to edit the lesson, wait for that page to load,

find the spot in the text where you want to fix that, uh, split, save it,

make your way back to where you were.

Uh, so that's, a small change that I think will have a significant impact.

And there, again, it allows us to provide a better system, once we've