How does the popular language learning app 'Duolingo,' which has over 30 million DAU and 70% of which access it continuously for one week, bring users back to the app?



The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), a US economic newspaper, has featured how the popular foreign language learning app 'Duolingo,' which has more than 30 million daily active users (DAU), retains its users.

The Only App That Always Wins the Battle for Your Attention - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/duolingo-streaks-notifications-app-spanish-bc87d6e4



A Sleeping, Recovering Bandit Algorithm for Optimizing
(PDF file)https://research.duolingo.com/papers/yancey.kdd20.pdf


Duolingo & Its Cheeky Notification Marketing | by Adithya H Nair | Medium
https://medium.com/@adithyahnair123/duolingo-its-cheeky-notification-marketing-9589a162515d


How Duolingo Uses AI to Create Lessons Faster
https://blog.duolingo.com/large-language-model-duolingo-lessons/


Keeping people hooked and interested is one of the ultimate goals in business. Duolingo is a popular foreign language learning app with over 30 million daily active users (DAU), and over 70% of DAUs access the app continuously for a week, and another 5 million access the app continuously for over a year, making it a very successful app in maintaining interest.

Ben Cohen, author of the WSJ article, cited two factors that draw people to Duolingo: streaks and notifications. According to Cohen, humans have a habit of looking for streaks, and Duolingo has succeeded in eliciting motivation by studying the human tendency for streaks.

Duolingo’s strategy is seemingly simple: it tells users how many consecutive learning milestones they have accumulated.



The message and timing of this notification

(PDF file) uses a bandit algorithm to test numerous patterns to maximize the number of people who open the notification. Because humans respond more to losses than rewards, the message is something along the lines of 'Your streak of XX days may be lost.'

Duolingo's Chief Product Officer, Jem Kans, also introduced one of the most successful notifications, which is sent after a week of inactivity: 'It looks like reminders aren't working. We'll stop sending them for the time being.'




Duolingo also uses streaks and notifications to keep users coming back to the app, and has developed an AI model called Birdbrain to optimize learning for each user.



Cohen said, 'It's harder than you might think to get users to come back to the app every day,' and added that Duolingo has succeeded in getting users to launch the app every day through a combination of thorough A/B testing to optimize its messaging, various gamification techniques, and AI to appropriately adjust the learning content.

Cohen has written a book called 'The Hot Hand: The Mystery and Science of Streaks,' in which he explains how humans like continuity.


Amazon | The Hot Hand: The Mystery and Science of Streaks | Cohen, Ben | Applied



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