New_Public: 🗣️➡️👯‍♀️ Come for the language skills, stay for the friendship

Social media is so much more than huge apps with billions of users. One fairly unexplored corner is collaborative, social language-learning platforms.

This week, Madison Karas, a product manager with experience in community journalism, has a reported piece about these fascinating apps. If you’re like me, this is an introduction to a whole new world with some actionable takeaways for prosocial product development.

– Josh Kramer, Head of Editorial, New_ Public

I just returned from a two-week vacation traveling in southern Mexico with one of my best friends. Where’d I meet them? A peer-driven language-learning platform.

Everybody knows about Duolingo and other solo language-learning applications, like Babbel. But online platforms like Italki, HelloTalk, and Tandem are their lesser-known, community-based counterparts. People are able to practice and learn languages by talking to each other online about ordinary topics that they encounter in real life. In these spaces, I’ve seen some of the more genuine ways digital worlds can bring us together.

These platforms connect people from around the globe through paid tutoring, casual texting, and even reading, writing, and drawing through language virtual exchange. They’re part of the growing online language-learning market, where making connections enables people to improve in their target language and sometimes develop relationships that extend beyond the platform.

As digital spaces that facilitate connections between people across continents, cultures, and languages, there’s a lot we can learn from them about sincere and constructive online interactions. My experience learning Spanish on these platforms prompted me to explore with my tutors and other learners how they approach facilitating meaningful relationships through shared linguistic goals.

HelloTalk

With 60 million users speaking in more than 180 languages, HelloTalk is an application with a dense set of features — maybe too dense. The app offers social media-like feeds and networking, as well as so many features that it can feel like a casino. There are in-app TV dramas with translated subtitles, AI learning tools, and on-demand courses, games, and gamification elements.

After creating a profile, users can start finding a conversation partner, receive requests to begin chatting, and begin posting publicly. There are nine feeds for recent posts, including a “For You” tab and a feed of posts from users you’re following. People post audio, text, and photos.

Sometimes they directly ask questions about the language they’re learning, and other times share about their lives like they would on any other social media platform: food posts, selfies, memes, and personal stories are all common. In replies, users can correct any poster’s grammar.

There are also live voicerooms where the host controls the theme (such as learning, karaoke, playing games) and who gets to speak and moderate. The app has monthly and yearly subscription plans, as well as ads and in-app currency used to buy features and even reward creators on the app.

“Everyone kind of just gathers into HelloTalk… It’s more of a free-for-all, wild west, so to speak,” said Jon Ludtke, a teacher in Peru who’s been using the platform for five years to learn Spanish.

Tandem

Tandem is a more polished and simpler version of HelloTalk. It’s a bit newer and smaller (with 35 million users) and has more tightly-focused features. To join, Tandem requires that users fill out an “application” with a photo and agree to the community guidelines. People also share language goals, topic interests, and conversation partner preferences. There can be a waitlist before users are accepted.

Once you’re in, you can chat, video, or audio call with other partners and join language “parties” and “clubs” for group interaction. On profiles, you can add your language certificates and even get references from other learners. There are some mild social media-like features, such as following other people and viewing how many people have looked at your profile, but far less than on HelloTalk.

Tandem also has paid subscription plans to upgrade features and advertisements. The platform’s guidelines are slightly more robust than HelloTalk’s, placing greater emphasis on community respect.

“Tandem’s a little more organized,” said Dan Finelli, a software engineer in the United States who’s used all three platforms to learn Spanish and Italian since the coronavirus pandemic. He added that he prefers some of HelloTalk’s social features, but Tandem feels less gamified than HelloTalk. “They're not always throwing stuff at you,” he said.

Italki

Italki is a platform for language-learning tutoring classes, where learners pay for individual lessons from professional teachers or “community tutors,” who are native speakers. There are over 150 languages to pick from and 20,000+ tutors who offer classes in grammar, casual conversation practice, and more.

Learners can find a tutor based on factors such as location and availability. There are also newer group class offerings and a community tab for tutors and learners to post learning content, like questions, flashcards and podcasts, but these seem to be less utilized (and understood) by users.

Many, including myself, use Italki as more structured learning in addition to practice on HelloTalk or Tandem. After three years of use, most of my weekly conversation practice sessions feel like a casual FaceTime catch up in Spanish.

Some tutors make teaching on Italki a full-time job, and others use it as a side gig. Italki takes a commission from each lesson. “I feel close to many of my students, but some of them I consider my friends, too,” said Maria Fernanda Medina, one of my Italki tutors. Medina lives in Colombia and has taught on the platform for four years.

Learning and beyond

Communal digital spaces that bring together people around a shared interest can be a little like participating in an online book club. As opposed to something like Facebook or Twitter, these platforms often feel more like working together on Wikipedia or Github. There’s an intended objective — learning a language together — but so much more can come out of it, like connections to new people, cultures, and places.

On these language-learning platforms, learners have a high amount of choice in formats and tools. This opens the way for more intentional interactions — not being sucked into a platform due to FOMO or doomscrolling, but motivated to engage with others because of a shared goal in a safe space.

Based on my own experience and conversations with others about their learning, these platforms appear to be very effective for language-learning. I’ve progressed from A1 to B1/B2 on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages in Spanish. For this piece I was able to interview Christian Jara — my Italki tutor and a native Spanish speaker — in Spanish with some translation assistance from DeepL while reviewing my notes.

Researchers have shown that learners on these platforms can improve their oral and written proficiency, and can even outperform conventional in-class language-learning methods. One study noted that learners on Tandem felt exceptionally comfortable using online language exchange and showed a high level of interest, which increased their frequency of participation and benefited their learning.

Learners and tutors I spoke with also appreciated that the culture and norms surrounding sharing personal information are more intentional in the service of learning. People usually share personal details on these platforms out of a genuine desire to teach other learners about their language, culture, or lifestyle.

Genuine relationships and opportunities

One significant, unique piece is that these language platforms can support long-term connections because learning a language can take months or years.

While it typically isn't people’s first objective on the platforms, some partners end up building strong relationships — including friendships and even romantic relationships. Jara, my Italki tutor, noted that while not everyone gets along, it’s “inevitable” for conversation partners to create friendships after talking multiple times a week, often for multiple years.

Not everyone on these platforms takes things offline, but many users have a story about finding a partner they click with:

• Finelli, in the US, met local and international friends from Tandem and HelloTalk in the US and Italy, and is planning a group trip with them to a concert next year.
• Luisa Russi Guzmán, my tutor on Italki, met her boyfriend on the platform after teaching him for years and eventually meeting in person. Today, the two live together in Colombia.
• Ludtke, in Peru, eventually developed a relationship with his girlfriend after they had been language partners on HelloTalk off and on for three years. He’s also been friends with a conversation partner in Mexico for five years, which began with posting doodles on HelloTalk.
• Jara has met up with students on their travels, and Medina, also in Colombia, keeps in touch with some of her students after finishing lessons.

Learners and tutors also shared that these platforms can offer professional opportunities, either by providing full-time work through tutoring or allowing learners to practice for professional environments. They’ve also shared about personal growth beyond language-learning.

“It’s helped me to be more open-minded and receptive about other people's backgrounds and cultures, and experiences,” said Guzmán. “I've had the opportunity to be part of special moments with my students, and I've made these connections and friendships that I'm pretty sure there was no way I would have by either social media or any other website or just by being in my own hometown.”

Sometimes though, relationships and friendships built on shared learning on these apps can be fragile and easily fall apart. Life gets in the way — friends unexpectedly log off and never return.

Safety concerns

The internet has taught us that no online space is perfect or completely safe. With platforms that are bringing together large user bases across the world to converse across cultures and languages, differences can arise in online communication settings. Instances of racism, sexism, and discrimination have been noted on all these platforms by users who post their experiences on the /languagelearning subreddit and elsewhere.

These platforms can be an overwhelming experience, as you may be talking to or receiving requests from dozens of conversation partners in a single day. HelloTalk’s free-for-all nature earns it a mixed reputation with learners, especially among women, who can receive unwanted advances from potential conversation partners.

On Tandem, you’ll see notes in people’s profiles deterring sexual talk — “(NO QUIERO HABLAR DE SEXO)” — and some Italki tutors I spoke with shared examples of rare, uncomfortable situations while talking with students.

“There’s not much control over what type of person comes from the platform,” Guzmán said.

Learners and tutors shared mixed experiences about sometimes reporting bad actors. There are tools on HelloTalk and Tandem to limit conversation partners by gender or sex, and to hide profiles, but negative experiences can still be overwhelming and drive people to leave.

Also, with the growth in AI use all over the internet, other learners I talked to mentioned seeing fake images or content on these platforms.

IRL takeways

The experiences I heard about from others rang true for me as well: our use of these platforms over the years hasn’t dominated our lives, but they’ve been consistent, meaningful parts of them. They’ve helped us meet our goals, brought more positive moments than negative ones within the platforms, and, in some cases, provided us with experiences that extended far beyond the apps.

I might be a biased superuser, but to me, these platforms have ingredients of success that could be applied to other online spaces outside of language-learning, such as:

• Creating connections around shared goals
• Supporting agency and choice of participation and interaction type
• Sharing openly about one’s life to genuinely connect
• Prioritizing intentional engagement

I believe that if more digital spaces focused on these qualities, they’d yield similar results: more goals achieved, more fun in experiences in real life, and more long-term friendships and relationships. I think that these platforms prove that digital interactions centered on helping us grow our off-platform lives can be rewarding, meaningful engagement.

“There's a lot of digital spaces where there's lots of talk about how it's escapism and pulls you away from reality,” Finelli said. “And maybe that's OK, because we need distractions and we need time for fun. But I think with these platforms, it's almost the opposite: it starts in a digital space but is connected to something very real.”

– Madison Karas