ENGLISH, BABY! BRINGS SCHOOLS INTO ITS SOCIAL NETWORK

Largest online ESL network now connects its more than one million students with English programs

Portland, O.R. – August 12, 2009

For the more than a billion people learning English around the world, to study abroad is the ultimate fantasy. And for those who do complete an English program in a foreign country, the experience is one to be proud of and recall frequently.

This summer, English, baby! (englishbaby.com), the world’s largest social network for people learning English, is launching new interactive school pages to make it easier than ever for students around the world to find an English program in the US and to keep in touch with their school after they graduate.

Versation, the parent company of English, baby!, built and manages the websites for the English school consortiums, American Association of Intensive English Programs (AAIEP) and University and College Intensive English Programs (UCIEP), each of which includes hundreds of programs all across the states.

“Our new school pages combine these great resources with the social networking features that keep our members coming back and keep our site growing,” says John Hayden, CEO and co-founder of English, baby!.

Ebaby! members can currently find any AAIEP or UCIEP program on English, baby!, and schools that register and pay $75 per month can customize their ad-free pages with text and photos, and can have “fans” among Ebaby! members who have attended the school or would like to. The “fans” are shown on the school’s page, virtually representing its community.

“It’s a great way for our members to stay connected with English programs in the US and experience the communities around those schools from their home countries,” says Hayden, who plans to offer school pages for programs outside the US by the end of the year.

About English, baby!

Founded in 2000, English, baby!, set out to teach English to the world in an innovative MTV-style manner, virtually immersing students in American culture and conversational English. Social networking features were introduced in 2006 and growth surged. Englishbaby.com is now the largest social network for English learners.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Jason Daniel – English, baby! Public Relations
Email: jason@versation.com
Tel: (888) 418-8021 x5#

All last week, the world watched the news unfold about Iran’s election and the subsequent protests over the results. But with traditional reporters on lock down in hotel rooms, social media sites have become the main source on this story. With more than 10,000 of our one million members based in Iran, Ebaby! has seen several forums pop up complete with Iranian voices from all sides of the issue.

Kristian Foden-Vencil, a reporter for Oregon’s NPR affiliate, OPB, took interest in the increased political activity on our site and stopped by the office on Thursday for about an hour. He spoke with Ebaby! CEO John Hayden as well as our resident English teacher, Alexis Nelson, about how the site work helps people learn English and is home to some very unique dialog on Iran. The four-minute piece (which contains a clip from our latest episode of EXTREME English, baby!) aired several times yesterday.

To join the discussion about the Iranian election or see what our global user base has to say, take a look at the forum mentioned in the story as well this one, the longest one on the topic on our site. English, baby! is glad to provide a place where people from all countries can share their thoughts on the situation in Iran in a common language.

With both free and Super Memberships, user generated lessons and celebrity lessons, social networking and direct help from a live Ebaby! teacher, English, baby! does a lot of things for a lot of people.

For the last few weeks, we’ve been working with Ryan Fleming at Willamette Week, our hometown, Pulitzer Prize-winning newsweekly, on a story that hit the streets of the Portland area this week. Often when Ebaby! gets mentioned in the press, it’s for a specific thing we do (like when the LA Times featured one of our celebrity lessons). And that’s great! But Ryan did a wonderful job of exploring many aspects of our site.

The article features quotes from one of the members we met in Beijing and one of the most active teachers on our site, as well as an excursion into our archives of more than 3000 lessons. And the illustration by Jonathan Hill that accompanies the article is probably the best visual representation of the Ebaby! mission created to date. So head over to wweek.com and leave a comment!

English, baby! is kind of a crazy business. In our press release about reaching 1 million members, we mention almost a dozen features or services we provide, and since 95% of the people who use those services are outside the US, it can make our business seem even weirder to people here at home.

Barry Moltz, who hosts a popular small business radio show called Business Insanity Talk Radio took note of these facts and invited Ebaby! CEO John Hayden to be one of his guests for an episode called the “The Weird Business Show” alongside the entrepreneurs behind Fantasy Baseball Sherpa, ParkingSpots.com, a home staging company, a phone company for people who have had their phone disconnected and more (a clip of just John’s portion of the show is on our press page). It was a lot of fun to learn about other “weird” businesses.

The April issue of Successful Promotions not only features Miley Cryus on the cover, it also has a five page story on viral marketing dos and don’ts by Kenneth Hein, a managing editor at AdweekMedia. The article outlines lessons that can be learned from the elven efforts of OfficeMax, a Carl’s Jr. mobile campain launched at a Lakers game, as well as anecdotes about 7-Eleven, Burger King, Axe, and a company you might have heard of called English, baby!

Kenneth tells the tale of our bonus guerrilla marketing sucess at the Beijing Olympics (we thought we were just making videos for marking later–turned out we were marking on the ground as well). Take a look at the portion of the article that’s about us here and the whole thing here. We’re really happy to have been included with such good company in such a good story.

For the past few months, English baby! has been featuring celebrity English lessons in which a star explains how to use a bit of conversational English.

Our most recent lesson with Sasha Vujacic of the LA Lakers, was featured on The Los Angeles Times website and the website of The Oregonian, as well as lakers-fan.com. The interview was also mentioned on The Los Angeles Times site before it was posted.

Ebaby! celebrity lessons have also been covered by many other media outlets:

• Portland Trail Blazer Nicolas Batum’s lesson appeared on basketusa.com, 95.5 The Game, PDX Pipeline, and Yahoo! Sports.
• San Francisco 49er Vernon Davis’ lesson appeared in The Press Democrat and The Mercury News
• The Thermals lesson appeared on localCut.

Well, the Olympics are over and the Ebaby! team is back in the USA. But what a trip they had! Take a look at the English, baby! Olympics page for the videos.

While he was over in China, Jason Simms sent emails about his adventures to our friends at Willamette Week, a Portland newspaper. The posts are behind the scenes and totally honest, since they’re for our hometown audience instead of our users. They make a good compliment to the official Ebaby! Olympic material. Here’s a quick breakdown of the six entries.

Opening Ceremony: “Everything is closed off for miles around the stadium. So we got as close as we could in a huge group of people up against a barricade in a park. It reminded me a scene in a zombie movie.”

Photo Ops: “I didn’t really know what was going on when the first person asked to take a photo with me—I thought vainly that I had been recognized from the website—but when a crowd gathered and we had to flee, I realized there had been a mistake.”

Ping Pong: “After being thwarted several times by the ubiquitous Olympic volunteers, we managed to reach the front row. There we discovered that we were sitting among the tennis coaching squad, who explained how the game works.”

Scalping: “He told me he’d rather just eat the ticket than give me a deal like that because it drives up the prices. He also wouldn’t let me film him. I wonder what the penalty for scalping in China is.”

Behind the Balls: “I talked to Superman of the Metal Balls and found out that he doesn’t even take tips—this is just his way of being a part of the Olympic spirit. It’s his dream to challenge an official Olympic athlete. The gold we awarded him was his first.”

Closing Thoughts: “I felt much more comfortable filming impromptu sports and interviews in Beijing than I do in Portland. Many people in the US seem to have a strange bias against cameras. They see a video camera and assume you’re doing something sinister. In Beijing, people pretty much always had a positive reaction to seeing a camera in a restaurant or on the street or in a market.”

The Internet is necessary to do a lot of things. Being an active member of a national government isn’t one of them.

It has recently become news that McCain doesn’t use email. When questioned, a representative of his campaign responded, that the senator, “is aware of the Internet.”

Well, I should hope so. I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who isn’t aware of the Internet, but I’m kind of surprised that there’s anyone in the US who doesn’t use it–let alone a senator and presidential candidate.

According to this article about increasing Internet penetration in China, only 71% of the US uses the Internet, so McCain is by no means alone. But what’s important here is that McCain might know English, baby! exists. Apparently his wife commonly logs on for him and directs him to things such as his daughter’s blog. So there’s a very small chance that she has directed him to our site. But, if we were to get on John McCain’s daughter’s blog, those chances would increase greatly. So I hereby pledge to do my best to get the attention of Meghan McCain and have English, baby! join the Internet in the category of things that John McCain is aware of. Who knows? Maybe I can even get her to create a profile here. Since McCain’s competitor, Barack Obama is leading him in polls of our members by 60%, he could use some help here, so maybe Meghan will step in. Stay tuned.

CNN Report on Internet use among US presidents and presidential candidates:

My first contact with Meghan’s blog:

Coverage of the Olympics this year seems to be divided into two categories. There’s news about the athletes, which is, of course, generally up beat. And then there’s news about the Olympics overall and China, which has been largely skeptical and often negative.

But, as we’ve been planning our trip to the Olympics, I keep thinking about the games are still an international gathering representative of a lot of what English, baby! stands for. Luckily, Mariah Summers at the Portland Tribune agrees. She wrote an article that came out today about our trip. She did a great job of capturing the spirit of the trip and the nature of the website.

When she was interviewing John, she mentioned trying to find other Portland-based companies sending people to Beijing. I wonder how many American companies that aren’t traditional media outlets are going to the games. I’m sure our team would love to compare notes with them.

A couple of weeks ago John participated in a discussion about language and globalization on The New York Times Freakonomics blog.

We were really happy to be asked because a trend seems to be developing. A couple of weeks earlier, The Oregonian picked up our election stats and quoted several of our members in a story. Now John has been quoted as an expert on language and globalization. Not only is English, baby! a recourse for students of English, but it’s increasingly becoming a source of information about global issues for the English speaking world.

John was in very good company in this discussion, alongside a UN interpreter, a linguistics professor and published author. Plus John and I are Freakonomics fans, so it was extra cool to get to work with Stephen Dubner, Steven Levitt and their team.