What's udemy? Is it legit?

[seebs]

Someone mentioned a site called udemy (apparently aiming for a sort of portmanteau of youtube + academy) which appears to be trying to do online education, and I am curious as to whether any of our bookworms have any information about it or opinions of it.

[Goliath]

I hadn't heard of it until just now, but it seems to be Yet Another Free Online Course/Lecture Source. That said, it seems to have courses on a wide variety of topics.

It's yet another thing I'd look at more closely if there were more hours in the day. Alas...

[LadyShea]

If it has good informative videos then it's legit. Are you concerned the information may be incorrect?

[seebs]

What I'm concerned about is from the other end -- someone there approached me about writing a course, and I can't tell whether I want to get involved. So I'm curious in terms of whether they are scammy or spammy or anything like that.

[Iacchus]

If it has good informative videos then it's legit. Are you concerned the information may be incorrect?You still have to be careful about who sponsors it.

[LadyShea]

I have never heard of it, so I don't think it's spammy. I would need to see the site and/or corporate info and principles to do any serious sleuthing.

They are probably trying to board the Khan Academy train which many are heralding as the wave of the future for education, and which people like Bill Gates are funding.

[LadyShea]

Okay, quick looksee and it looks legit to me. Here's some investor stuff you may want to check out.

We can’t speak higher of AngelList and the value it provided to Udemy’s fundraising process. We received over 25 intro’s to top-tier investors. What other way can you get 25 investors to ask for intros to YOU! AngelList led to investments from Jeremy Stoppelman (CEO of Yelp), Dave McClure (500 Startups), Josh Stylman (Angel Investor, co-founder at Rotomedia and Reprise Media), and Ben Ling (executive roles at Google, Facebook, YouTube). But what was even more important was that AngelList got our round over-subscribed, so we had momentum which helped convince our other investors to make their decisions faster and in our favor. http://venturehacks.com/articles/udemy

[Iacchus]

I have never heard of it, so I don't think it's spammy.Or, maybe they're just trying to peak your interest, until they start plastering it with a bunch of spam like YouTube? If that's all it was though, most folks could probably put up with it.

[LadyShea]

I meant they aren't spammy in that I don't get spam emails about them, nor have I ever seen sidebar or other ads for it in my wanderings of the net. I see ads for for-profit colleges all the damn time

[seebs]

FWIW, responding to their query letter got no response. So I infer that it's probably spam.