This clarification is even more unsatisfactory than the announcement itself. I really hoped he will reflect on the frustration of the users, but it’s just the same thing over again. “We measured some stuff and everything will be still fine for you”
With this, there is no real future of memrise. And by the way you could get the resources for a decent Decks-App if you would take Subscriptions and it’s features over to Decks, people would pay for having the same experience.
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This is misconception.
I am one of those complaining too. But You have to weigh in, that those happy ones or indifferent ones will not go here to express their gratitude or any other opinion.
We are not representative sample of userbase. There is over 40 million downloads (and potential users) of Memrise
Even so, our voices should not ne disregarded.We represent the future development of all the new users they have now. What will they be paying for after they are finished with the short official courses- will they invest in lifetime subscription? Why should they?
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Since focusing on our own language courses, we’ve grown twenty times over, and a very small proportion of learning on our mobile apps now happens on community-made courses.
Considering that community-made courses cannot be enrolled into directly on the app, unlike the Memrise ones, this is a distorted analysis as there’s no parity in platforming at the point of measure.
The differences will only accelerate in the future, as we enrich, improve and diversify the language learning experiences in the main Memrise app.
So if you’re going carry out major developments on the Memrise app, why not duplicate and rebrand the existing app for Decks. It runs more or less fine for the community-made courses and would only need tweaking for security, bugs and OS upgrades.
I would also be interested to understand Memrise’s vision for your own future language courses:
- Will you begin supporting the creation of courses in more minor languages?
- Will the language courses in general be developed further than fitting the requirements of a two-week holiday? Some language learners are interested in growing well beyond level A1-A2
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I was hoping there’s be some backtracking after the outcry, but no. We’re wasting our time and energy on a company and product that doesn’t care about us.
The people in these forums who are angriest about this may technically be a minority of Memrise’s userbase, but we are the core segment who power the community, evangelise Memrise to our friends, and crucially pay for the product. I think Memrise will eventually look back on this day as a mistake. I’m not going to waste anymore time on them, and I don’t think anyone else should either.
See you guys: it was good while it lasted.
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See, this here’s an example of a good point you’ve made.
The forum is generally unadvertised (I stumbled upon it by accident some time ago, after having already been using Memrise for months) and many don’t know of it at all. A lot of users are likely app only (meaning they are only afforded the courses easy to search for on the app – which has included community courses less and less of late). Memrise is making money from these general level users, the voiceless majority who probably don’t care about this fiasco.
Basically, the ‘reässuring’ propaganda message recently posted on the blog says “Uh, we don’t need you anymore. Actually, you’re kinda getting in the way. Here’s your BFH, love – don’t let the door hit you on the way out”.
And it’s possible, with so many uncaring users, they’re right about it, too. They don’t need us. Minorities aren’t the ones who are pandered to – they don’t line your pockets. Horrific but true.
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Dear Memrise,
It seems it is time to break up.
I had a wonderful time using your app/website in various ways.
I started to fall in love with you because of your community-based courses as I could find vocabulary specifically for my textbook I used back then. From that moment on, I started to get addicted to you. Our relationship got closer each time. Though you were not perfect, I loved you. When starting your app, it was the next step to feel always close to you. And when you created your official classes I knew, this will be a lifelong relationship. At that point, i decided to subscribe for lifelong membership. I wanted to be committed to you, and I got so fascinated that I wanted to support you in every possible way, checking your job offers regularly. Memrise, my favorite company. The only app I was motivated to invest in. I knew, I will study with official courses first and as soon as I will have finished them, I will go back to community-based courses to get specific knowledge. We didn’t make it to that point. You made your own decisions without considering me. Checking the statistics at that point, it is not representative at all. Yes, I did use mostly official courses these days, but that is not enough for me on longterm. Maybe we just developed ourselves in different ways, at least you started to change a lot disregarding my emotions. It will be hard for me now, to live without you. There will be something missing every day in subway or bus. I feel betrayed, as you don’t focus on me anymore. I feel betrayed as I invested time and money in you and now you are not the one I fell in love with anymore.
I am angry and disappointed and sad. It will take time. It will get better but you left a scar. I won’t pay that easily anymore for an app, I now have to start looking around for another app to help me. I never wanted to but I started to get to know duolingo better. I don’t like it as I liked you. But I can’t trust you anymore, you are not who you were used to be. I am sorry, that this ends like this.
Adieu
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Thank you for the update. I thought of waiting mid-March, but I really don’t see why I should do it. You obviously don’t care of your paying customers. I just cancelled my PRO subscription right now.
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Their statistics do indeed state paying users use their courses more.
Well, why is that?
Because they’ve completely removed user created courses from being on the app in the first place. When your grandma goes to learn 100 words of Italian for her trip to Italy, she might pay for a subscription to learn that on a Memrise course, but she will never find the better user created courses (Memrise have made it difficult to find them).
Meanwhile, the advanced language learners and long time subscribers are being shafted.
Memrise wants to turn into a shitty copy of Duolingo, where no one actually learns a language.
Listen to the testimonies here. People have literally learned languages using nearly solely this platform, but only with easy access to user courses on the app…
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Honestly I don’t think they’re right. Look at Ziggy: it was built on the same kind of “analysis”. We here said it was a bad idea, and it looks like we happened to be right. Who knows your product better than your best customers?
I’d really like to know how many months new paying users, using only Memrise -made courses, stay on Memrise as paying users. If I want to just learn some basics of one language or another, there are many free resources online (Duolingo, of course, but not only). And if I should pay for it, I wouldn’t choose Memrise but Rosetta Stone, Mondly or one of the hundred other apps available online.
So I’m pretty sure they will regret this choice in not so many months, but I think this time Memrise/Decks won’t survive. This is much worse that an ugly, childish, idiotic mascot.
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That’s the point, though. The community was very vocal about it and it was eventually removed (praise all on that one – couldn’t stand it). I bet there were a vast number of people who never visited the forums or followed them on social media, people who never said a word about Ziggy – it didn’t stop 'em paying.
They have a large userbase, some paying and some not, so obviously the people here are hardly the extent of their users; the app has basically no communication between users like this and they often can’t even see the community courses – they might not even notice anything’s changed. They might even be fooled into the believing personalisation down to the course creation level is a new feature launched on a sister site called ‘D*cks’.
Everything is perspective. We see this atrocity and understand Memrise’s failing here. What do people not in the thick of it see?
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I don’t think they moved back on Ziggy because of us here, but because it didn’t bring them the new users they hoped to get. So in a way, we were representative of the other users. And I think we still are (and that the Memrise guys still don’t get it).
By the way: writing it “D*cks” = 
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We have to just face it. Memrise is a small company and they had to make a choice to focus their few resources on something they think is more important. Now, I disagree with their business direction as well as the justifications. If they can’t scale a simple app to handle both simple content creator courses and their grand ideas they are doomed.
Anyway, this language learning system model is new and lots of competitors and free services soon available so most of us have a lot of good choices, so all’s good.
I will stop supporting Memrise, only reason I paid Pro was to help them out as a small company but that does not seem to be on their agenda now to help us back.
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Why the hell would Ziggy get them users? That thing was f*** ugly and clearly needed launching into space without its helmet. Besides, it’s not like it was a personalisation thing, like on Khan Academy (where I had assumed they got the idea in the first place) where users can’t upload an icon but may choose an avatar that ‘evolves’ with the points accrued.
Well, it’s a dirty word on here now. It must be asterisked for sake of the sensitivities of our genteel readership.
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Initially I gave Memrise some time to listen to such clear feedback and postpone the deletion of community courses, but it’s clear their minds are made up, so I’m joining the mass #MRexit. It’s regrettable, because I’m halfway through several community language courses that I wish I could complete, but Memrise has made that unfeasible by deleting offline access to them.
Beyond that, though, is the fact that I paid Memrise for a service they promised to provide and now they are still taking my money for the rest of the term but refusing to provide the promised service or return my payment.
Memrise has lots of users for their official courses because they’re the only courses that beginners can see and they also have fancy video trinkets, etc. However, after a year or so, those new users will discover what we all have discovered: Memrise has no official options to further your language education beyond the basic stages. Only the community-based courses do that.
New users haven’t had a chance to discover those (often superior) courses because Memrise has hidden them. However, eventually they will reach the end of what they can learn in Memrise after 1-2 years and be forced to move on. So it will be delayed, but those users will start falling off unless Memrise fixes the problem.
If Memrise is already maintaining all the infrastructure for a Decks, mobile-ready website, wouldn’t it cost them almost nothing to freeze the current version of the app and port it over to Decks so that users can still have an offline app option? No updates required, nothing. Just leave the app as is and make it available to those paying Pro users for as long as it functions.
Seems to me that is the least they could do.
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There are so many other options, for example just publish the REST APIs for anyone to write cool/better Memrise apps. But it won’t happen, there’s some danger in letting the crowdsourcing innovate and bypass their features.
Sad though that comments to your CEO’s blog post are not being published, so questions don’t seem to be what you guys are after.
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Edited my comment. Thanks
I believe, that they believe this to be rather strategic decision, not decision about recourses at all. They are not upfront about their rationale here.
As long as the Decks is not going to be having good enough perspective in terms of monetization and profit, than they would actually promote active competitor.
Cudos to the E Cooke to recognize the need to dedicate some resources for the guys of the nostalgia phase. I feel from his wording that he actually cares to some extent… the thing is, that in his/theirs opinion supporting Decks any more than this might be contraproductive. So that’s where the “painful” decision for them might be.
They sincerely do not see any future in our projects at all … only liability and competition. In such scenario it is actually admirable for them to uphold any resources on it.
If we want them to act positively for Community Courses, then we have to convince them, that they are mistaken about the potential of this platform. Given both the decision they made and wording they used, they really are honestly convinced that this direction has no use and no financial future for them. They act just only in the name of pity and politeness towards us (however unlikely it looks to us). And that can bring their support to us only so far (as long as we don’t compete).
So we have to either convince them, that they believed their own statistics without realizing the context, and there is more to us and this Decks division than meets the eye -> prospect of millions of users obviously. Or we have to keep believing in that and pool our forces elsewhere. (In order to get better features, app, offline etc).
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…maintaining both kinds of experiences on a single platform creates many difficulties. It slows and complicates our development of new experiences, it holds back our product design, and it can introduce bugs and confusion for learners on our community-created courses.
That makes sense. After one of the recent updates the cards were suddenly super big and I was wondering why. Probably has to do with some new development for the official courses. Still, a separate app for Decks would solve this. The app wouldn’t even need a lot of features and not a lot of future development.
I wonder if one reason why there won’t be an app for Decks is that there are still problems with downloading community courses. I tried to download some a few weeks ago and most of them just threw an error message at me and I still can’t use them offline (even after re-installing the app).
a very small proportion of learning on our mobile apps now happens on community-made courses.
after a careful analysis of how and where community-created content is being learned, which is overwhelmingly online.
You removed the ability to search and add community courses in the app several months ago. New users who only use the app won’t even know that these courses exist. You created the condition for this statistics on purpose and now you’re using it to justify this decision. No, this is not a satisfying reason.
I also miss a statement about refunds in this blog post. We were promised in this thread to get a fast reply from the help desk, but all I got was a template message basically saying “we need a bit of time to look into your request, we’ll get back to you after March 18th”. That’s pretty unsatisfying.
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I still think if their engineers can’t solve problems such as supporting simple custom courses, how could they implement fancy new features without bugs?
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