| Slogan | Happy Studies! |
|---|---|
| Type of site | Private |
| Registration | Optional |
| Available language(s) | English, French, German, Japanese, Igpay Atinlay, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Russian |
| Launched | January 2007 |
| Alexa rank | 10,057[1] |
| Revenue | Quizlet Plus/Ads |
Quizlet is an online learning tool created by high school sophomore Andrew Sutherland. It was originally conceived in October 2005 and released to the public in January 2007.[2] As of April 2011, Quizlet has over 8.7 million user-generated flashcard sets and more than 2.8 million registered users.[3][4]
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Quizlet began as an idea that popped into 15-year-old Andrew Sutherland's head when he was assigned by his French teacher to memorize 111 animal names.[5][6][7] After realizing the daunting task of mechanical memorization, Sutherland sat down to write code for a program to aid him in memorization.[8] However, these first lines of code were scrapped and then rewritten meticulously and carefully over the course of 420 days by Sutherland himself. In January 2007, Quizlet was released to the public.[9]
In November 2009, Dave Margulius who worked with Sutherland as an investor and advisor for Quizlet since 2007, was named CEO of Quizlet. Sutherland remained the President of Quizlet and CTO. In addition to hiring CEO Dave Margulius, Sutherland also announced the opening of Quizlet's office in San Francisco.[10]
In January 2010, Quizlet announced that they hired their first full-time developer and product manager, Phil Freo. Andrew Sutherland, the creator of Quizlet said "I'm very excited about this because Phil is a talented developer and can really help step up the pace of innovation at Quizlet." Sutherland also mentioned that in 2010 there will be many cool features and products that will be directly from Phil's work. Andrew also spoke about the future of Quizlet "We're finally going to launch an upload-to Quizlet images feature in the next few days. We're also going to restart our work on getting the Quizlet interface translated into multiple versions, which I've been wanting to do for a long time. And a lot of you have asked about iPhone and other mobile devices, to which I say we're still working on it, but it's one thing we really want to focus on this year." Also Andrew stated his goal for Quizlet "Overall, our goal is to grow Quizlet as big as we can this year. We want to reach as many students as possible, because we think Quizlet is great and could be helpful to a lot more students."[11]
In February 2010, Quizlet launched "Quizlet Plus", which gives the user the ability to upload and add their own images to their flash cards to study. This plan also gives the user the ability to create unlimited groups and no ads are displayed on the pages. Quizlet Plus costs $15 a year.[12]
In March 2010, Quizlet launched a new design of the set page. The goal of the new design was to make the set page more intuitive and more visually appealing. The major change that the site made to the set page was to get rid of the Familiarize mode and build it right into the set page itself. After the new design was launched an update was made to add a button that will shuffle the flashcards that are built into the set page.[13]
In January 2011, Quizlet launched text-to-speech audio in English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.[14]
In February 2011, Quizlet's user interface was translated by a team of volunteer users into additional languages, including German[15] and French.[16]
In April 2011, Quizlet surpassed 5 million flashcard sets. Also in April 2011, Founder/President of Quizlet LLC Andrew Sutherland announced he was taking a leave from his education at MIT, in order to work at Quizlet full time.[17]
As a memorization tool, Quizlet lets registered users create "sets" of terms customized for their own needs.[18] These sets of terms can then be studied under several study modes.[19][20]
This mode is shown automatically on the set's main page. This study mode is very similar to traditional paper flash cards. One side of the card is shown, and clicking on the "Click to flip" button which shows the other side of the card. The option is available to show both sides and this option will divide the screen in two with the term and definition shown on the same page. Another option is available to see the Familiarize feature in full screen.In addition if you wanted to shuffle the order of the flash cards this option is also included.
In this mode, users are either prompted with the term or definition and is prompted to define the other. Terms/definitions that are incorrectly defined are recycled until the user gets it correct, making this mode of study very effective.
The "Test" mode lets users create randomly generated tests through selecting options to customize a test so that the test may comprise of, for instance, only multiple choice questions and matching questions.
This mode is a matching game where terms and definitions are randomly scattered around the screen. The goal is to match terms with their appropriate definitions in the least amount of time possible. it is possible to glitch the time score by setting your computer clock back one minuite at which point the score clock will run in reverse.
"Space Race" is a mode that allows players to test their typing skills while memorizing. The object of this mode is to type ("kill") the matching word or definition before a scrolling word or definition leaves the screen.
This mode of study is only available for terms that only contain letters and is developed in association with Spoken Language Systems (SLS), a branch of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. When a definition is provided, the user speaks the term and voice recognition software determines if the spoken term is correct. "Voice race" is currently a beta feature.