Duolingo, through its corporate life, has created many uncanny advertising campaigns. From leaning on its bird’s stigma of stalking those who don’t do their lesson plans, it seems that Duolingo has its ads on point with the youth.

Duo the Bird has been a great advertising campaign. But, as of recently, Duo has died, run over by a cybertruck. This stunt is drawing a lot of attention to new people but also poses some questions about its future. For starters, the fictional bird was the company’s entire advertising campaign, and the other characters in the Duolingo universe aren’t as advertisable as Duo. Now this also poses another question. What is the legitimacy of Duolingo?

Is Duolingo actually useful?

Duolingo is by far the most popular language app across the world with 43 different languages, not just helping English speakers, but allowing people all across the world to learn a new language for free. But is it actually useful?

As many people have said before, free is not always good, and many now fear it’s the same for Duolingo. To start, Duolingo based its platform on a game with many features like leaderboards, candy crush layout, and many other small things to make the platform more friendly.

These little changes do come with a drawback as they can distract from the actual learning aspect. Not to mention learning apps in general might not be good at learning languages. You can compare it to learning math from math games compared to learning it in schools. A better way to learn a new language like Spanish would definitely be going to an actual Spanish speaking country or going to an official Spanish school.

The Bird is Reborn

In what can only be described as the easiest prediction of all time, the Duolingo bird came back from the dead, claiming that its death was staged. The fact that the company tried to create a new plot point in its advertising campaign, and then later recanted it because it couldn’t think of something worthy to replace Duo the Owl is funny, and honestly kind of cowardly.

Whereas before the “Duolingo Storyline” was thought of as a creative way to make a story from characters in a language app, with its secondary purpose being a marketing tool, its true nature has now been revealed.

In a plot twist that could have started a new chapter for the company and its storyline, Duo the bird was brought back for the sole purpose of being recognizable and creating more money. This debacle also brings Duolingo’s legitimacy to even more doubt, as if the company can’t even keep a coherent storyline or make bold business decisions, then how do we know that the app can even continue to help people learn anything for the long term?