busuu.com | the language learning community

busuu.com nominated for the European TechCrunch Awards - please vote for us!

It´s a pleasure to announce that busuu.com has been nominated twice for Europe´s most important Start-Up competition - the European Tech Crunch Awards!

We have been nominated in two different categories:

• Best Bootstrapped Start-Up (meaning that we have not received any big external financing so far)
• Best Web Application

Now we need your support - so please give us your vote one time and another time! :-) Voting ends this Wednesday 1st of July so please hurry up!

Thanks in advance and we will keep you updated on this blog! Keep your fingers crossed!

busuu.com wins a Silver Lion in Cannes!

busuu.com wins a Silver Lion in the International Advertising Festival in Cannes for our Silbo Gomero campaign.

In October 2008 we contracted the Madrid agency La Despensa in order to launch a campaign to improve the awareness of our website.

The outcome was the amazing campaign to “Rescue the Silbo Gomero” for which we won now the most important price in the advertising industry.

We loved the idea from the beginning: If you can learn languages on busuu.com - why not also learn a nearly extinct whistled language from the Canary Islands - el Silbo Gomero? It´s not only an entertaining campaign but it draws the attention to an important cause which we from busuu.com fully support: to prevent smaller languages from their extinction! So we decided to create a fascinating video explaining the history of this amazing language and launched a special section within our website where you can find lessons of “el Silbo” (if you log in, you can see the full content and start practicing).

The outcome was impressive - we received huge media coverage in Spain (contacting all important media by sending them a bird cage with a plastic singing bird inside… they loved it! ;-) and “el Silbo Gomero” was in the news again. The media even supported the application of this charming language to be recognized as UNESCO world heritage.

Please find the awarded video below:

We are very proud to receive this prestigious recognition! We not only  increased the awareness of our language learning community but also raised the public interest for a wonderful language which definitely needs to be preserved!

busuu.com widgets for your blog or website

Happy Birthday busuuuuuu!

Exactly one year ago, our language learning community busuu.com was launched! It´s amazing how quickly time flies and we are very proud of the development of our little baby during the last year…

By now, more than 100,000 users from over 200 countries have joined our strongly growing community and every day, thousands of users are online in order to improve their language skills.

Just in time for our birthday, we want to inform you about a special offer, a new learning tool and a great new partnership!

1) Special Birthday promotion - 10% off all premium memberships

As a birthday is nothing without a present, we offer all our users a special 10% discount on all our premium memberships. Just use the promotion code BIRTH2009 when upgrading to a premium account. This special brithday promotion is only valid from now on until the 14th of June 2009 - so take advantage of this special offer and boost your language skills by enjoying the full range of our learning functionalities!

2) New functionalities - every day new Live Units

We just implemented a brand new and absolutely fascinating feature: live units! This video-based learning tool is designed to provide you with interesting videos on a wide range of topics like news, sports, travelling, etc. They are provided by well-known sources such as Reuters, EFE, Deutsche Welle and France 24 and you find them in your language area. The videos are updated automatically, so you get brand new learning material every day! As a Premium user you can post your opinion on each video and get it corrected by native speakers of our community. In this way you have a tool to improve your listening comprehension and writing skills which is updated on a day-by-day basis!

3) New partnership with Eurolanguages.com - find your language school on busuu.com!

We are very proud to announce that we have joined forces with eurolanguages.com! By now, you are able to find a language school abroad directly via our website. Just go to your language area and you will find a new tab called “language schools”. Within that area, you receive information about more than 80 certified language schools from all over the world. You get details about the location of the school, the courses offered and even an evaluation of the school provided by students who have already studied there. There are no hidden costs so you get exactly the same price as by booking directly with the school - the only difference is that we make finding the right school much easier and more transparent! This cooperation with eurolanguages.com brings busuu.com another important step closer to our dream to become a “one-stop-shop” for language learners all over the world!

As you can see, there are many reasons to celebrate! So join us in our birthday party and enjoy language learning with our website!

busuu.com in Top 3 of best website of the year award!

busuu.com has been nominated as Top 3 candidate for the Spanish Award “Premios de Internet” to become the best website of the year! This award is organized by the Spanish Association of Internet users since 1997 and it recognizes websites which have significantly contributed to the development and good use of internet. More than 560 websites applied from all over the world and we are very proud that busuu.com made it to the TOP 3! The winner is defined by the number of votes received (1/3 of votes come from users, 2/3 from a selected jury) so we still need your vote:

http://www.premiosdeinternet.org/index.php?body=categoria&id_rubrique=4

Please press the blue “votar button” and then “confirmar” next to our entry in order to support our candidature!

Thanks a lot in advance and we will keep you updated - this Wednesday we will find out whether we made it to the top!

UPDATE: Unfortunately we didn´t win the price but we were still overwhelmed by the number of votes we received from the users - more than 1200 people voted for our candidature! So thanks a lot for your support and we congratulate the winner Bubok who offers a very exciting and innovative concept to publish your own books!