It’s just that I’ve been a Memrise user for nearly 10 years now and I feel like not much has been added to the service that is Memrise since its inception.
Sure, the design has changed several times and unfortunately for the worse (I miss the space theme, it was brilliant and balanced).
And they added official courses - and those are great.
But what else? Grammar courses are never getting released for the web platform it seems, and the chatbot feature is even being removed.
Mems are gone in the new web design.
So what is Memrise doing to improve itself as a service? How is it evolving?
When are we getting new official courses for more languages? It’s been years.
Continuation of existing official courses? For more advanced levels.
Grammar lessons on the web?
More customisation? Which is VERY lackluster.
Etc.
It justs feels like not much is going on at all and that they’re hardly working on anything new. I would hope that some of the subscription money is being funneled into further development…
I love Memrise and what it has to offer, but at the same time it’s beginning to feel a bit stale.
I miss the space theme, it was brilliant and balanced
As one of several old timers, I agree.
And mems - really helpful and a USP.
And I’m sorry that Creators IDs & Avatars aren’t visible on the App.
(Although I’m pleased much of the original planting, flower and watering terminology still prevails.)
Obviously MemRise wants to appeal to new people and become financially viable, but …
I wish Community Courses and the Forum were more prominent (especially on the app).
I find the many changes confusing (Classic, Alpha and Beta options), not to mention the different appearance & layout and behaviour.
Perhaps it’s my age, but I’m never sure what their target age is - eg Ziggy and rockets.
Still I’m really pleased Decks went and all courses are available on the App (if you know how).
But I support the concept, the great 1 to 7 language levels and of course like many others, I try to create & support great Community Courses and help Users & Creators.
What is mind-boggling to me is that so many users are comfortable with this evident stagnation. Only a small number of people is still concerned about Memrise development, others, which are great in numbers, don’t see or don’t want to see or to don’t want to voice any problem at all.
Seconded. There seems to rarely be a week without any Duo-improvement, those guys are really at it! Might be because there seem to be plans to better monetize the platform (after all, only some 3% of their user-base seems to be Plus members and thus paying money, apart from the ads).
Some interesting (recent) stats/infos can be found → here.
Interestingly, Duo doesn’t really propagate new things all too openly. For instance, I really only stumbled across → Hoots by accident. It can’t be older than a few weeks. Quite an improvement, but it seems to only be available for specific courses (I tested it with French).
Sure, but eventually they will suffer from a drought of new users and a sinking user base if they don’t focus on customer retention…
At some point, it will be much harder to gain new customers compared to keeping the ones you have, especially when other services out there keep developing while Memrise is at a standstill.
For instance, I really like what they’ve done over at https://www.busuu.com/ with their very deep courses. They also have vocabulary review. And for Spanish learners such as myself, https://www.spanishdict.com/ has a nice vocabulary review system, in addition to awesome grammar lessons and much more. So there are definitely other alternatives out there.
My yearly subscription is coming up for renewal by the end of the month, but I’ve already cancelled my subscription and I don’t really see the value in renewing it anymore. I’ll probably continue to use Memrise for the time being, but as a free user.
