Duolingo Clubs adds new social elements to language learning

Duolingo is one of the most popular apps on the Play Store, but oddly, its social features have been a

bit on the light side up to now. The latest update to the language learning service aims to alleviate that with Duolingo Clubs. The feature is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: users (or "players" as Duolingo likes to call them) can congregate into social clubs to keep track of each other's use of the app and progress though the guided, game-style courses.

Clubs has something of an integrated social network: users have their own profile page with new items placed in it automatically, which other uses can comment on for encouragement. There's also a weekly leaderboard to foster some good-natured competition. The new Clubs feature is available for all languages, to all languages, users can comment on their friends' progress no matter who's using the app for what, and of course it works across Android and iOS apps. According to Duolingo's press release, the aim of all of this is to help people stay motivated as they make their way through the language courses.

Okay. Okay. All that is great, Duolingo, really nice stuff. But don't forget: you promised us a Klingon language course on New Year's Eve.