Do’h. Smart.fm Is Closing Down And Going Paid (And Stealing All Your Content, Too)

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Do’h. Smart.fm is closing down, and taking your content with it (holy crap, I made a lot for them, including a good amount of semi-pro audio, which I paid someone for). Well, they’re only kinda-sorta closing down. The parent company, Cerego is ending the Smart.fm service and rebranding it as “iKnow” (wait… hasn’t this happened before… like twice?) and slapping a monthly fee on there.

Pardon The Opinion-Piece / Rant

So, I’m going to write a bit of an opinion-ish editorial-ish rant-ish piece here. Not sure how else to do it. I feel sort of… betrayed?

It’s not because Smart.fm shouldn’t be a paid service… it probably should be. They should have done this a long time ago. My feeling of betrayal is a long term thing, that started over a year ago. Here’s my own personal timeline with Smart.fm… or should I say, iKnow? Hmm, iDon’tKnow…

I discovered iKnow.co.jp (Smart.fm was originally known as iKnow, which is what they’re turning back into now). It was awesome. Probably one of the coolest knives in the knife drawer, so to speak. I loved the heck out of them. They were great.

I kept liking them, but then they switched to Smart.fm. They were still good though.

Then, they got a new UI designer (or something, I don’t know what happened), and everything became hard to use. Things started breaking/sucking, and nothing worked as well as it used to. For learners and people creating content, things just weren’t as easy as they used to be. Someone ruined it, and I don’t know the details. I just know Smart.fm slowly got harder and harder to use (actually it got even worse than this, but keep reading).

I met with one of the co-founders in San Francisco, when he was visiting / talking with people (possibly for investments?). I won’t tell you which one, because I like the guy. We talked about all kinds of things, but one thing that sticks out was his promise that Smart.fm would always be free. Ads? Definite probability… White labeling? Perhaps… but never a pay-to-use kind of program. Whoops. I guess that wasn’t actually his decision to make. We even met regarding a deal that would give him a lot of free content. Good thing it fell through, otherwise that particular content would have been their free content they could now charge for.

Things kept getting worse with the UI. It got harder to create content. It used to take almost no time to create cards… now it takes forever. Things not only loaded slow, but they added a ton of unnecessary steps in order for me to get something set up, making it hard to get things done. Other people started noticing this. For some reason, I had faith that it would get better, yet it only kept getting worse.

I start hearing from various (secret… ahem) contacts about problems from within Smart.fm – the engineers don’t respect the management. The management don’t really understand how to work with engineers. The engineers just kind of do what they want, there is no direction, and nothing gets done. In the meantime, however, Smart.fm raises a ton of money (because their executives, while not good at managing engineers, do happen to be good at raising a lot of money). I hear more and more about how working at Smart.fm isn’t all that great… and when your engineers aren’t happy and they don’t respect you, that’s never a good sign…

Then, things started breaking. My content (which was awesome, and now is kind of broken) started getting mixed up weirdly. Audio would shift around seemingly at random, pairing the wrong audio with the wrong word (audio that either I recorded or paid someone to record for me). My example sentences were getting switched out with other, somewhat correct but mostly incorrect, sentences. Basically, some algorithm on the back end was making me look like an idiot. I would try to fix things as fast as possible, but new problems appeared as fast as I could fix the old ones. This really sucked. This is when I realized it was time to come up with an alternative for TextFugu, which used Smart.fm a lot (all lists I created).

Then, bam, this news hit. Smart.fm is closing down and is becoming iKnow (again). I’m not upset about this because they decided to go to a paid model. Sure, I was promised this would never happen, but I definitely saw this happening at some point. I’m irritated because of the slow, painful process that took place to get to this point. The lowering of quality… the breakage… the lack of support for all the breakage… it goes on and on.

Sure, I’ll have to switch all my TextFugu flashcard content over to something else (some of it already is, thankfully), but I’m hoping that will be a blessing in disguise. I’ll have more control over my own flashcard content, and that will be nice. Still, I’ve had faith in Smart.fm for way too long, even when others had long given up on them. This, however, is my breaking point.

So, I guess it’s time to put down the Smart.fm torch (it doesn’t exist anymore, anyways) and pick up something else. Anki’s good, you should try that.

So, what do you think about all this mumbo-jumbo of Smart.fm changing to iKnow (again) and switching to a pay model? For me, I think it’s smart they’re going paid. They should have done that from the start. But… for me, Smart.fm’s quality has just gone down way too far, and I’ve stuck with them for way too long. It’s time for me to let go and turn to something else. What about you?

/EndRant

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  • Damien

    The desktop client is open source, so it will always remain free. I charge for the iPhone app because I need some way to put food on the table, but if you can’t afford it there are free iPhone clients with less features available: ankimini and ianki.

  • http://twitter.com/edgarjon Jon

    Honestly, I was one of the few people telling you to just stick with Anki when you posted about not being sure whether to recommend “smart-fm” or anki to learners. I’m biased because I’ve been using anki (and pleasantly watching it grow) for about 4 years now.

    I became aware of iKnow when it was iKnow…and I used it for awhile (in conjunction with Anki). However, when it became “smart.fm” I didn’t really like it as much. I quit using the service altogether; but it seemed like every Japanese-speaking-person-online was recommending smart.fm to Japanese learners for some reason. I never understood why, because I felt anki was simply better. I know it’s not as flashy UI-wise, so some may feel it’s too boring to look at for them. But, it’s just freakin’ flash cards. I don’t need any fancy UI-effects; I need a good, stable, reliable and working release of an SRS system that gets the job done – and for me, that is, and always has been, ANKI.

    P.S: By the way, your friends’ descriptions of what it’s like to work for “smart.fm”/”iKnow” sounds similar to my current job lol. It sucks.

  • http://twitter.com/edgarjon Jon

    I know I’m just repeating what Ian said here, but I wanted to chime in as well. Damien really does update Anki all the time, and both he himself and the program are fantastic. I think what the problem is, is that iKnow was less scary-looking (and sounding) than Anki for complete beginners. I think the UI of iKnow was very welcoming for the beginner, and as someone else said, there was a sense of community (like NihongoUp or even TextFugu forums, which I’ve yet to really participate in just yet, but plan to eventually), but with Anki there’s not much sense of community. You end up feeling like you’re kind of on your own. Sure, there’s downloading/importable decks that others have created that you can use to study from, but for the most part anki = you creating your own black and white flash card, front and back, and maybe, if you want to put the effort into it, adding some pictures and sound files to the card. Perhaps because of this, beginners are turned off from anki, and turned on to services like iKnow.

    However, I still prefer anki, personally.

  • http://yonasu.com/ yonasu

    I’m a bit surprised that they’re changing the name again. Sure, “smart.fm” has kind of a bad reputation, but switching back to the old name isn’t gonna magically make things better.

    I agree that iKnow should’ve been a paid service from the start, and even if we’re talking about a really small monthly fee here, I think that can actually make users use the service more. Having that said though, user submitted content should always be free, or at least the author should get a cut of the profit.

    The worst part, besides “stealing” content made my professionals such as yourself, is that they also “steal” a whole lot of content made by amateurs. And I doubt this content will be reviewed for quality assurance.

    Either way, I hope the service will get better because I don’t know any better tool for improving your vocabulary. I’ve never liked Anki, for many reasons, so I’ll have to keep my hopes up.

  • john

    i started a fb group to bring this paid crap down!!! yeah there gona listen! lol
    But hey if a bunch of people join it could only help highlight the big Fing problem here XD

    so please join if you know someone who is using tell them to join!!

    http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_188621021157777#!/home.php?sk=group_188621021157777

    wooo!

  • http://twitter.com/PickMyBran PickMyBran

    I started on iKnow about 3 years ago when I first found your blog–after the Japan Times article about you.

    Back then, and even when they first switched to Smart.fm, everything worked wonderfully.

    While teaching ESL at university, I incorporated the site and uploaded loads of (copyrighted…shh!) content for my students. I also got their system to be used by the other professors.

    About a year ago, it turned to total rubbish; nothing worked properly, everything was slow. I still held on, believing in their mantras about free education.

    Now, I’m disgusted with them. I’m sad that they have my original content, and hope, for their sakes, that they removed the multitudes of copyrighted content before they’re sued.

    I’ll have to check out Anki.

  • http://twitter.com/PickMyBran PickMyBran

    I started on iKnow about 3 years ago when I first found your blog–after the Japan Times article about you.

    Back then, and even when they first switched to Smart.fm, everything worked wonderfully.

    While teaching ESL at university, I incorporated the site and uploaded loads of (copyrighted…shh!) content for my students. I also got their system to be used by the other professors.

    About a year ago, it turned to total rubbish; nothing worked properly, everything was slow. I still held on, believing in their mantras about free education.

    Now, I’m disgusted with them. I’m sad that they have my original content, and hope, for their sakes, that they removed the multitudes of copyrighted content before they’re sued.

    I’ll have to check out Anki.

  • http://twitter.com/PickMyBran PickMyBran

    I started on iKnow about 3 years ago when I first found your blog–after the Japan Times article about you.

    Back then, and even when they first switched to Smart.fm, everything worked wonderfully.

    While teaching ESL at university, I incorporated the site and uploaded loads of (copyrighted…shh!) content for my students. I also got their system to be used by the other professors.

    About a year ago, it turned to total rubbish; nothing worked properly, everything was slow. I still held on, believing in their mantras about free education.

    Now, I’m disgusted with them. I’m sad that they have my original content, and hope, for their sakes, that they removed the multitudes of copyrighted content before they’re sued.

    I’ll have to check out Anki.

  • http://twitter.com/PickMyBran PickMyBran

    I started on iKnow about 3 years ago when I first found your blog–after the Japan Times article about you.

    Back then, and even when they first switched to Smart.fm, everything worked wonderfully.

    While teaching ESL at university, I incorporated the site and uploaded loads of (copyrighted…shh!) content for my students. I also got their system to be used by the other professors.

    About a year ago, it turned to total rubbish; nothing worked properly, everything was slow. I still held on, believing in their mantras about free education.

    Now, I’m disgusted with them. I’m sad that they have my original content, and hope, for their sakes, that they removed the multitudes of copyrighted content before they’re sued.

    I’ll have to check out Anki.

  • http://twitter.com/PickMyBran PickMyBran

    I went through and deleted my content–and then my account–before they officially shut down.

  • gorghurt

    By the way, do you use some automatic script like thing to konvert your work?

    I tried the smart.fm plugin for Anki, and it seems to work, though the description says it wouldnt work…
    I’m confused.

  • http://japaneselevelup.com Japanese Level Up

    That’s irritating.

  • quizlet all the way!

    I also LOVE quizlet. My school uses it for most of its language classes. It’s easy and fun to use. ^-^

  • Mats

    Michael @

    I reckon a great deal of smart.fm’s budget has gone to design. personally I couldn’t care less about how flashy it can be. take JWPce for instance. it looks like a digital wart but it’s free and it works wonders

  • Mats

    of course JWPce does not need the server capacity that smart.fm does

    I’d donate some money if it were still as good as it used to be. $12 a month you say? that’s too big a number for my student budget

  • Rowen

    I think it does Anki a disservice to say it’s complicated… to use it in the most basic way it’s actually very simple – just download a shared deck and go. creating your own deck is very simple too.

    It only gets complicated if you want to start fine tuning it or adding plugins etc

    In the long term the way anki works is waaaaaay better than smart.fm anyway imo because you can set it up exactly how you want it.

    The 1 thing I’ll miss from smart.fm is dictation.

  • Rimachan

    I’m veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery disappointed, I’ve been using smart.fm for a long time and I was counting on it to help me with my first visit to Japan. I’ve known Anki too for a long time, but honestly it doesn’t compare to smart.fm.
    I’m switching to textfugu now for my kanji lessons. Pleaaaaase tell me you’re not gonna switch the jacket on us too.

  • Hinoema

    It’s always somewhat shady when a site puts a paywall around user created content it didn’t create and doesn’t own, and ends up causing nothing but trouble.

    I use anki and livemocha, myself.

  • HaineChan

    I think it sucks! All my progress for nothing. I’m half-way my Master Hiragana and now I have to find another website to learn it to me in the same educative way as Smart.fm

  • http://www.facebook.com/LukeHero Luke Hero

    I’m pretty gutted about this as im in the process of using Smart.fm for the learning Hiragana chapters on Textfugu :-/

    Will you now be creating your own way of doing Hira/Kata or will you be switching to another site for your content?

  • http://logicaust.wordpress.com logicaust

    As soon as I found out what they were doing, I went through my entire collection and proceeded to delete errything.

    Such bald-faced deceit can’t go rewarded. After this, I deleted my account and gave them feedback, which basically said stay away from the content, because it’s not “free for use”; it’s copyrighted from my university course.

    I was using the site as a place for personal study; noone else had access to what I put up. If I knew at any point that iKnow/Smart.FM was going to eventually become paywalled, I would *never* in a million years have created any content, or have used the website.

    As it stands, I only liked the scheduling part, the part that cracked the whip. Personally, it was a disjointed way for me to study, because I learn better when I utilise the big 4 (reading, speaking, listening, writing). At the end of the day, their so-called sophisticated algorithm for determining the optimal time for studying…seemed to always be in the “every two days lol” sweet spot. It didn’t seem personally tailored at all.

    So yeh, bye Smart.FM, thanks for lying to everyone. Cerego Japan, iKnow, whatever you want to call yourself in the future, I’m definitely not trusting you guys again.

    Peace.

  • http://www.facebook.com/euphoriafish Teresa D. Lee

    Anki has some web stuff too. Not the community or shared lessons of iKnow/Smart.fm, but you can store lists of flashcards on the website.

  • http://www.facebook.com/russmoench Russell Moench

    Thanks everyone for your feedback. I work as the Content & Curriculum Manager for Cerego and guided the team that created all of Cerego’s official courses.

    We can certainly understand that a lot of users are disappointed with our decision to become a paid service. The transition from a free service to a paid service is always difficult.

    People seem most upset about the issue of content. The perception out there is that Smart.fm content has been primarily built by the users. This, however, is simply not the case. Many users have made their own courses, but the vast majority of study activity is on the official Japanese, Chinese, and English courses. There is little user-created content in the system (original items and sentences) that a lot of people are studying. Of course there are a few popular exceptions, such as Koichi’s courses, but by whatever metric you use (time studied, items studied, items mastered, goals completed, etc), the bulk of all activity is around official courses. Most user-created content is studied by the user who made it, not by others.

    Because of this, if you look at the new iKnow! service, you’ll that the focus is on official content, not user-created content.

    Please see our blog post on this topic here:

    http://blog.smart.fm/en/2011/01/31/a-message-from-iknow/

    And please keep the feedback coming. Everyone on the team is listening.

  • Jonlink

    You are a great man.

  • Jonlink

    It is pretty ballsy to come here and subtly intimate that the user-created content sucked.

    At the same time it skirts the issue that the site’s functionality was on a never ending slide downward. I tried out the new site and it is clearly more of the same in terms of poor performance. For a free site that was forgivable, but not for a paid one.

    Get your act together and I’ll consider trying iKnow if there is a free trial. The one right now is worthless because the site in its current form is nearly worthless.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001034830592 Pieter Van Broekhoven

    As a user, and not a creator, i find iKnow alot easier to use than Anki..
    Changing would be tedious (don’t I sound old xD!)
    But the worst part is the pay. 10 euro a week, oh yay. When a car hit me when i was 14, and i was almost bleeding to death, my mom got angry at ME! because my bicycle front wheel now had to be repaired at a cost of 20 euro. My life <

  • http://twitter.com/Musouka Musouka

    Thanks for the great efforts. One of the things I like about Smart.fm/iKnow is that the system needs proof of your knowledge. So if, for instance, the system asks you if you know a certain word and you say yes, it wouldn’t stop at that but would ask you to choose the correct meaning of the word. This way you cannot cheat the system.

    The desktop Anki doesn’t offer that. It offers choices like Again, Hard & Easy. These might be fine but it doesn’t give me the same degree of satisfactions when I get something right. Does the iPhone app offer something similar to iKnow? And will the paid app ever come to Android. I will be more than happy to buy it.

  • Kenchan

    He never said or even implied that user-created content sucked…just that it wasn’t being studied. Makes sense to me, too. I never created anything on Smart.fm that wasn’t purely for myself. I most definitely couldn’t be bothered to make a generalized curriculum starting at BELOW my own level and going ABOVE it. I only create what I need to study at the time, and I bet most everyone else does too. Since each list users create is so personalized to them (because they created it) they’re probably under the false impression that it’s THEIR content that’s so great, but from the perspective of a user who just wants to study, only the generalized stuff is even relevant.

    That personalized touch was what made Smart.fm great, though… if they can keep that they’ll probably be able to keep a lot more users…

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Matthew-Chan/510329067 Matthew Chan

    I

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Matthew-Chan/510329067 Matthew Chan

    I found iKnow.jp really good. I have been using everyday now.
    I don’t really know how Smart.fm supposed to be, because I have actually never heard of used Smart.fm before. But I recently saw a posting suggesting using Smart.fm to learn Japanese (the post might be really old though). Then the first thing I saw was that Smart.fm will close down and become iKnow.jp. And apparently there will be free trial until March. So I tried it and really liked it.
    Is iKNow.jp kind of similar to Smart.fm, or is it very different? Either case, I would definitely recommend using iKnow.jp, it is one of the best learning tool I have seen.

  • http://www.facebook.com/russmoench Russell Moench

    Kenchan, the ability to customize your courses and create your own content is absolutely going to be a part of iKnow! We know very well that the content creation tools on Smart.fm are not acceptable, and we haven’t released the new content tools yet because they are not ready for external use. The new creation tools on iKnow! will be more powerful, more reliable, and easier to use.

  • http://twitter.com/VXLbeast VXLbeast

    Well, I can’t afford a paid program, so that’s that. Furthermore, I am following your program Koichi, so I will go where you point me. That being said, I will definitley miss smart.fm. I rather liked the GUI, but then I never saw iKnow. I was more than happy with how I was learning hiragana with their program (even if there was no easy way to restart goals and a couple options were tucked away where no one would think to look.) So yah, its a shame. But, who knows? Maybe it will go free in another year? Lol (and ad-supported doesn’t bother me a bit.)

  • http://www.video-games-for-healthy-living.com Adriana

    This whole process has been so disappointing for me. Not just as a Japanese learner, but as a linguist… Seeing iKnow go down the drain was heartbreaking. Especially because its user-generated content was some of the best on the internet for Swedish learning.

    I don’t intend on paying for this “service” any time soon, so Swedes, watch out!

  • http://smartanki.zephyrist.net/ Kevin

    Hello Koichi! I’m also quite displeased with the sudden announcement as I just started getting back into Smart.FM myself. If you need any help with migrating all the TextFugu content into Anki or other alternatives, please let me know! Your TextFugu service is great and was a great resource of learning for me and I want to give in part of my effort in return as well.

  • Info

    Please explain how to download the Core 2000 and 6000 decks. Please

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1512302516 Megan Richardson

    Can they just take your content and post it somewhere else AND charge for it? Is that even legal?

  • Jon

    I’m sorry, but I don’t think that he said it— implying by definition means he couldn’t have said it. The “comment” made by Russell is just a reposting of his talking points from the blog, which continues later on to say that “…it’s been difficult for users to create good content in large volume.” I believe this brings that implication into sharper relief.

    It’s all kind of moot at this point. They’ve said their piece and (in my opinion) thrown themselves under the train. The great thing about that internet is that people are always looking for a good opportunity and I believe a better service now has a huge opening and a solid example of what not to do.

  • Rascal

    using the Anki menus:

    File -> Download -> Shared Deck…

    search for japanese core

  • Anonymous

    Hey.. why did you delete my comment? That to so long to write… :’(

  • Anonymous

    Why do my comments keep disappearing?
    Have I posted something I shouldn’t?

  • http://www.tofugu.com koichi

    not that I know of, unless you’re posting spam? I’ll check the spam net and
    see if your comments got caught

  • http://www.tofugu.com koichi

    don’t see anything in spam / flagged, though your other comment does look a little spammy, even though I know you didn’t mean to make it that way…

  • Anonymous

    Well the link I wanted to post has been posted but I had another comment that was quite verbose with just some feedback about the whole issue

    Perhaps it’s too long?

  • Anonymous

    Saying that, I replied to Russell Moench too but that never stayed on the page when I refresh.. hmm

  • http://www.tofugu.com koichi

    Hmm, perhaps someone put you on a Disqus blacklist? :(

    Maybe disqus is just having trouble, too. I dunno. No idea if there is a
    length limit on comments, either. I imagine it would have to be reallllly
    long

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  • http://elysiaart.blogspot.com Elysia

    Aww ;_; looks like it’s time to have a go with Anki then.
    The smart.fm ipod/iphone app never worked for me anyway.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1258860151 Jorden Allen

    This is so depressing. I logged on the other day and my friend asked me if someone died, by the look on my face. I’ve been a member for almost 2 years and I absolutely loved it. I, borderline pathetically, told myself all of the problems would go away, recommended the site to countless people…. and now they’re closing. Granted, it’s about time they started charging for the service, as great as it was, maybe it won’t be quite so janky anymore. (Though charging for user-generated content is bs).

    I do have to say that the iKnow interface is nice and they’ve added a couple of features that are nice (though the speaking skills training is a little gimmicky). I’ll definitely stick it out until I have to start paying… who knows, they might just reel me in. In the mean time, I’ll be checking out the other resources you’ve recommended (I’ll be interested to see what you do on Textfugu :) – no pressure)

    As of right now, I’m with Brad F. – something else, will undoubtedly come along, and the cycle will continue. C’est la vie (in the digital age).

  • Franzeska

    Man, I hope nothing happens to Lang-8! I’m happy to pay for services I use, but the new iKnow revamping means you can only study with the sound on, at least for now. (And regardless of the fact that that’s clearly better, I was using Smart.fm because it was easy to drill from computers I can’t use the sound on or download things to. An app that requires sound just isn’t useful to me.) I was expecting them to go paid or partly paid at some point, and I was expecting to fork over the cash. But considering how much they now suck, I won’t bother.

  • http://twitter.com/yukisuishou 水晶雪

    Darn it…I just joined a few weeks ago too. D: And if they’re not giving credit to those who originally made all of those epic lists…I don’t want to pay for that “stolen” content…

    I’ve been using SpeedAnki, which is a JLPT-kanji flashcard system. I really like it. I’ll also check out Anki; seems to be really good. *goes to delete Smart.fm account D<*

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