Important Update: Upcoming changes to Memrise community-created courses

are personal (non public) courses also going to be moved to decks?

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Yes, they will be.

Why didn’t they just make the app a ‘pro members only’ service, keep memrise’s USP (user created content) and avoid the cost the cost of setting up a new website and losing all the subscriptions from the pro members who have no interest in memrise content??

Luckily I got the email about these changes a week before my subscription came up for renewal.

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I think because they want to create their own brand courses in order to compete with other expensive apps like Rossetta Stone so they need to get rid of other courses that won’t be part of their new brand courses. Just my guess xD

By the way, anyone who is disappointed by this change should be leaving a one star review on google play, looks they’re actually reading and replying to peoples comments on there. This forum is a bit of a black hole.

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I don’t get how they can think they can be competitive on the market of language learning apps. There are hundreds of website and apps that sell basic courses in many more languages than Memrise, and Memrise’s courses are really not that good at all.
So yes, WHO is going to pay for it??? I can’t imagine how this business model could work.
My main concern though is that when their language learning app won’t make as much money as they imagine, the first thing they will close will be
 Decks (of course). So easy to see it coming.

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Not wise since you cut out a large chunk of possible customers and I don’t mean people who use the courses. I follow language classes and the teacher has made courses for all the words we have to learn which is extremely handy, yes I know they will be on decks from now on but like many I mostly use the offline mode and forsee a lot of problems using public wifi and redownloading deck’s pages to run through my courses over and over again specially since they also have audio. There simply is no quick learning on the go anymore, instead I have to worry that somewhere I get some public wifi and then pray the connection is fast enough that I can load Decks in order to do the course. Which is the exact reason I bought a pro subscription.

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By the way, anyone who is disappointed by this change should be leaving a one star review on google play, looks they’re actually reading and replying to peoples comments on there. This forum is a bit of a black hole.

Not a black hole — in less than 2 days 220 different users shared their opinions!
Rating the app with 1 star is harsh, but definitely a way to make a complaint. Just not to forget to change it if the changes won’t come through after all.

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True, but I’m sure a comment left on google play carries a lot more weight.

As a pro member who only uses courses I make these changes mean I am suddenly no longer able to use the app. In that respect one star is probably one too many!

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The more I think about it and read the messages here from other disappointed users, the more it feels like that we get a message in around 6 month after the launch of Decks, which will look something like this:

It was a hard decision (as usual) but we will put Decks down, because it doesn’t pay off like we expected it, please go to the Memrise main page to continue with our courses.

I’m not quite sure how Memrise thinks Decks will work out, if you can’t even use your subscription there and with that reduced “feature” set.
If I had have the money, I’d have bought a lifetime subscription to support my learnings with weird courses that Memrise doesn’t offer (like Sanskrit, Faroese, Lithuanian a.o. for German speakers or ancient languages for my studies), I’m glad that I spent it for my vacations instead.

That’s indeed the worry with their current track record. I would say it even includes their paid service in case they are in financial trouble.

this is only your own impression. I am one of the dinosaurs on memrise using solely the web version. Users such as myself saw this coming, years ago, and looked for alternatives, but (quite vocal) ducklings always made fun of us


as such, the idea of splitting makes sense for the owners - they will finally have clear data about the paying base, and what these customers are paying for. The measure makes sense also when one thinks about resources, here this, there that


Unfortunately, Decks is probably doomed from inception - brings no profit, has no mods, the mother company does not support changes anymore etctetc. (Despite us being told otherwise
) Unless


R.I.P


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Please no if that happens and Memrise doesn’t return the community courses I will literally have to move elsewhere like Anki

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:thinking: - https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/11/memrise-raises-15-5m-as-its-ai-based-language-learning-app-passes-35m-users/

If I had the money, I’d have bought this “Deck” division from them and saw it as a core business to develop it around user curated content with best practices in communication with content creators

(that doesn’t mean decisions has to always be in favor of community, trust me - that also can suck, because content creators tend to be sometimes just too narrow-minded and being conservative to the “past glory days” of features - troubles known from Wikipedia. But all roll-outs need to be done on transparent basis with good enough, very respectful and reasonable feedback due process and loses and gains be weighed well)

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You’d better move now. From all I read thus far, Memrise is dead set on making Decks a thing. Now, if they will make an app + offline mode for it in the future remains to be seen, but it’s unlikely given that they don’t make any revenue from it.

This is the sad truth, but Memrise is not willing to listen to us. All they listen to right now is the money they’ll make from new users, which is quite pathetic in my opinion.

with all the money disappearing in the past day I wonder if they’ll rethink, lots and lots of people quitting Pro

Believe me, they already have this data. It is too easy to process logs and make calculations what the paying members use, how often. If they prefer community course or official one.

Moreover, with this data it is very easy to predict how many paying customers were for community course and used an app. And who and how often used it offline. It is already there and a good IT specialist could get it in a day.

I believe that they are no fools and they have made their calculations and have predicted their customer loss.

And if so - they are already Ok with it, and it looks like

  • Customers who uses offline community course are a very small fraction (despite being vocal here), their loss could be tolerated
  • Very serious changes in the business model lie ahead, so all this is irrelevant
  • (More drastic version) A merger is ahead. In this case one needs to cut costs by all means possible to present a better financial report etc.

#mrexit

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I couldn’t agree more with you.
See @kevin5284, MANY people live in a country where internet connection is lousy AND expensive. Even in 2019.

Nowaday everybody has a mobile device and you simply can’t expect people to login, create and/or study courses on a website with responsive web design. To me and to many others, I think what makes (made?) Memrise unique is courses made by users that allow everybody to discover and learn an “exotic” language or to study specific topics of a language already learnt.

And I don’t even talk about the online/offline content situation


At first, we will all rush to Desks website but I bet after months maybe a year, the statistics in connection will drop down. According to me, the platform will slowy be dying and the community will be shattered as users will likely turn to numerous flashcards apps


If Memrise sticks to its plan to create Desks (and no doubt it will despite the users’ deep dissatisfaction), it will be worth developing an open-source Desks app so that it can be update and improve by voluntary among the community.

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I guess the main point here is considering the feedback at all. Most web services (even the one I’m working for and worked for in the past) is not communicating with their user base at all and then it’s the user who is to blame for not loving the changes.

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