Social network site enhances language learning

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 20 January 2008 02:32

Your IT - Entertainment

Here's a neat idea: a new social networking site designed to help people learning a second language by facilitating networking between students, and perhaps reciprocal relationships where each is learning the other's language. The site, VoxSwap.com has been started by UK-based freelance journalist, Sean Hargrave and his wife Nicole. It was, he says, was borne out of his difficulty finding a way to practise his very rusty German and his conviction that  social networking sites were becoming too huge to be useful.

VoxSwap allows users to exchange instant messages and talk via an inbuilt VoIP service. Users can personalise their profiles with video, pictures, tags and further information about themselves. VoxSwap incorporates on-screen virtual keyboards to cater for the different character sets of different languages. But one thing it does not appear to have at present is a user interface in any language other than English.

VoxSwap was officially launched on 17 January, and according to one blog site on that date had 225 registered users. The company has not revealed its revenue model. There is at present no charge for registration, and  no advertising.

The site has been built using the Kwiqq social networking software , billed as a system designed for rapid deployment, simple setup and easy extensibility  of social networking websites. It is the first site to be build using Kwiqq version 2 which is based on Symfony, an open source PhP framework.