chrix Posted December 11, 2009 at 06:47 PM Report Share Posted December 11, 2009 at 06:47 PM I was registering an account over on lang-8 to do some writing exercises and some such, and came across this text from their official blog: At the moment the service is free – you do not have to spend money, paying for the best language course, or for the best audio lessons. All you have to do is to register and start looking for friends. Even without a friend you still can be able to have your journal entries checked, but then most of the fun is missed. It is all dependent of the time, you want to spent learning new language. Everybody can justify for himself – should he pay for a courses or audio classes, or find a friend-native speaker in the target language, with whom he will be able to talk, write or just have fun. And you don’t have to use your free time, or weekends, while trying to learn new language – you will always have your friends there, ready, when you are ready. The future language education will be heavily influenced by language exchange and probably for first time we will have a really effective way of learning foreign language. So there are plans to make the site paid-only? They do have a premium subscription, but in all fairness I can't see how that would generate much income for them. What would prevent people from going to other places such as www.italki.com (what's their business model, anyway?), or whatever else there is, even though none of the other sites has such a focus on getting your writing corrected... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xianhua Posted December 11, 2009 at 07:18 PM Report Share Posted December 11, 2009 at 07:18 PM Now that you have registered an account, prepare for an avanlanche of requests to be your 'friend'. This is the one thing that has put me off Lang 8. Those frequent messages from people who are probably just trying to 'collect' friends (you know, like Facebook ) are just too burdensome. Any member can correct your work without being a 'friend' anyway - and vice versa. Skritter is the only thing I've ever felt compelled to pay for in my learning capacity, so if Lang-8 starts charging, I will say 886. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrix Posted December 11, 2009 at 07:40 PM Author Report Share Posted December 11, 2009 at 07:40 PM I would also pay for chinese forums I was actually quite happy with italki, but what lang-8 has got going for it is the getting the writing corrected, though if push came to shove, you could ask people on italki I guess... So how easy is it to get people to correct your stuff? You seem to indicate that it works fine without actively looking for language partners? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xianhua Posted December 11, 2009 at 08:18 PM Report Share Posted December 11, 2009 at 08:18 PM So how easy is it to get people to correct your stuff? You seem to indicate that it works fine without actively looking for language partners? The corrections always arrive fairly quickly (depending on what time of day it is in China). In fact, I would say the corrections sometimes go overboard, and you'll find several different people giving you differing grammatical and structural suggestions, which in my case, just leads to confusion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imron Posted December 11, 2009 at 09:02 PM Report Share Posted December 11, 2009 at 09:02 PM The thing that always put me off about lang-8 was all the advertisements, and not just the advertisements but the type of advertisements. Typically these would be huge banner ads along the top and side saying something like "World's Best Japanese Dating Site", "Find Asian Women" or similar. Which is very misleading for anyone who happens to notice your computer screen when that is the only English on the page, and the rest is in "funny characters" (I always set my language settings to Chinese) and contains half a screen full of faces of asian women - i.e. the people lang-8 is recommending me look at to correct their journal entries because they match my language pair, but no casual obvserver would realise that and could easily put 2 and 2 together and get 5 I would have considered paying if they had offered a version of the site without ads, and I notice that their premium subscription now offers this but only for the first 2,000 subscribers. Well, I have no way of knowing how many they're up to, and I definitely wouldn't want to be paying and still get ads. Even if there was a way to specify advertising preferences and turn off dating ones I might consider it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrix Posted December 11, 2009 at 09:10 PM Author Report Share Posted December 11, 2009 at 09:10 PM Hehe, I've happily kept my settings on the forums here to show me the ads because I hope this is helping you guys run them Well, I'll see how it goes. One thing I've noticed, it only allows you to practice two languages... But I'd like to do more.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imron Posted December 11, 2009 at 09:15 PM Report Share Posted December 11, 2009 at 09:15 PM You might as well turn them off. If you feel the burning desire to pay the forums money, don't forget you can always subscribe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrix Posted December 11, 2009 at 09:25 PM Author Report Share Posted December 11, 2009 at 09:25 PM is there any other way to pay through something other than paypal? I don't wanna sign up for them. Otherwise we'll have to wait until the day where I'll get back to Beijing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natra Posted December 11, 2009 at 11:06 PM Report Share Posted December 11, 2009 at 11:06 PM Honestly, I do not think that they will make it so that you must pay to use the service at all. If they did that, their user base would shrink drastically. The only way the service can feasibly exist and work well is if there are a mass amount of users who frequent the website for free. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrix Posted December 11, 2009 at 11:24 PM Author Report Share Posted December 11, 2009 at 11:24 PM But I'm still curious about websites such as lang-8 and italki.. there's obviously a business model behind those sites, and I don't think revenues generated by ads are enough. So how are they making money? I just don't want to start using a site that might falter just when I've started relying on them.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roddy Posted December 12, 2009 at 12:09 AM Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 at 12:09 AM I don't know those sites very well, but if you can't see a business model the chances are they're spending VC money - see here for Lang-8's angel funding at the start of this year. Livemocha had VC funding. Skritter I remember reading started off as a college project and then got funding. Nciku are backed by Naver, a Korean Internet firm. Italki has had funding. Some or all of those may be making money in their own right, but if not, look for the funding. Pretty much impossible to say how viable any site would be under any business model without access to the figures, and even then the people with the stats get it wrong often enough. Hehe, I've happily kept my settings on the forums here to show me the ads because I hope this is helping you guys run them To be honest one person viewing ads isn't going to make much difference - if you find them interesting / useful, great, but if not there's absolutely no need to keep them on for the sake of the forum coffers. Best thing anyone can do for the forums is participate. Typically these would be huge banner ads along the top and side saying something like "World's Best Japanese Dating Site", "Find Asian Women" or similar. We get those too, although not sure how often. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrix Posted December 12, 2009 at 12:12 AM Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 at 12:12 AM Yeah, I think you're right. People have been wondering about the viability of twitter from the beginning, and yet it is still there, though I suppose still burning VC money. I suppose their long-term business model is to get bought out by the likes of google, yahoo, Microsoft or what have you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrix Posted December 12, 2009 at 01:50 AM Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 at 01:50 AM Until now I only get ads from the Confucius Institute. And noone has friended me yet, that's probably because I haven't put up a photo (unlike on italki ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natra Posted December 12, 2009 at 02:05 AM Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 at 02:05 AM No idea how they are making money, but I did see that notice on their website that said something like "x number of premium users are needed in order to keep Lang-8 running." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abcdefg Posted December 12, 2009 at 04:22 AM Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 at 04:22 AM ...and I notice that their premium subscription now offers this but only for the first 2,000 subscribers. Well, I have no way of knowing how many they're up to As to Lang-8, 1737 accounts are still available for the advertising-free premium section as of now according to their welcome screen. They must not be selling terribly fast. I posted a paragraph this afternoon and got two corrections within a few hours. Looks like a helpful service. I plan to try using it regularly as a way to improve my shabby written Chinese. The anonymity makes it less humiliating than swapping mail with my bright Chinese friends. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imron Posted December 12, 2009 at 12:00 PM Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 at 12:00 PM I only read the premium subscription page as far as the how many the offer was limited to and then stopped. They should really put how many are left next to this number. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrix Posted December 12, 2009 at 02:03 PM Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 at 02:03 PM OK, my first impression is actually quite positive, I think it's much more focused than italki. I've been pleased with the results I've been getting.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anon6969 Posted December 12, 2009 at 02:06 PM Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 at 02:06 PM If you friend people then your diary entries will appear on their homepage and they will be more likely to help you with corrections so its in your interest to accept lots of friend requests. When I make a diary entry it is usually corrected within the hour and has 3~5 corrects by the end of the day. Perfect for improving my written Chinese with quick feedback and therefore improving my Chinese. Complaining about ads is stupid - just ingore them / block them in Firefox or subscribe. I really like Lang 8. The only think I don't like is the amateurish web design of the whole site. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imron Posted December 12, 2009 at 08:52 PM Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 at 08:52 PM (edited) Complaining about ads is stupid - just ingore them / block them in Firefox or subscribe. I can always ignore the ads, my gripe was with the mistaken impression the ads would give other people when I was visiting the site. Also, not everyone uses firefox, and at the time there was no option to subscribe and have the ads removed Now they have this, I may well do so. Edited December 12, 2009 at 09:04 PM by imron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meng Lelan Posted December 13, 2009 at 03:29 PM Report Share Posted December 13, 2009 at 03:29 PM I think the dating ads in there are inappropriate and have considered writing a complaint about the ads. I do like that there's a Confucius Institute ad in there, it's nice. Maybe bias on my part considering that my Chinese School is going to be taken over by the Confucius Institute next year. But lang-8 is a nice resource. Though I wish there was a wider age range in there, seems like everyone is in their twenties on lang8. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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