Quick Review of Izzui – The Facebook LMS

By: Justin Ferriman • August 2, 2013
Filed Under:

Facebook is being used for a whole lot more than comments and pictures these days. Not too long ago, an ambitious Facebook app called Izzui came about with the goal of allowing people the opportunity to create and sell training on the world’s most popular social networking platform.  Naturally, this program peaked my interest, so I decided to create a free account and take a course.  Below are my initial thoughts on the Izzui program.

First Impressions

interfacejpg

Installing Izzui is about as easy as it comes, it just requires you grant the app permission to view your contact information and all that other invasive stuff 😉 … After a couple of clicks, I was into the program.  You will be prompted with a welcome message and an option to take a quick tour of how everything works.  It’s pretty self explanatory, but worth the extra minute just to get acquainted. The layout is very similar to the popular MOOC platforms today.  There is a search bar so you can quickly find what you need from course list. Once found, you can enroll into (for free) or purchase the course if it has a price.  It’s a pretty “cold” look to be honest, and lacks a true “brand” experience – but it gets the job done I suppose.  Naturally, Izzui cannot shake the Facebook branding, so it loses a bit of identity.

Taking a Course

I decided to take one of the free courses (How to Tie-a-Tie) offered on the site.  Again, enrolling is quite easy, just a few clicks.  I then was taken to what I assume is a kind of profile.  Again, extremely basic.  In my profile I had my list of course and whether or not I had completed it.  I launched the course (which was created in QuickLessons rapid elearning development tool).  A quick Google search led me to discover that the two companies have some sort of partnership, or perhaps one in the same. Either way, you have to create (or view) courses in QuickLessons so it doesn’t matter the relationship I suppose.

I started taking a course and left after a few lessons.  My status updated to a Yellow (Orange?) circle, apparently indicating that I was in progress – a conclusion I came to despite no key being present.  I went back into the course and finished it, sure enough the circle turned green.  There wasn’t a quiz associated with this course so my score wasn’t listed, but had there been one I guess it would have appeared there as well.

Other Items

If you would like to create and sell courses, then you can do so using Izzui, but only with PayPal.  Also, you are confined to QuickLessons, which to be honest I am not very familiar with (and since this post is about Izzui, I’ll stick to the topic). That said, from their website it looks like it is seeing healthy adoption within the Spanish/Portuguese speaking community.  QuickLessons plans start at $29/mo, so in order to sell courses you’ll need to sign-up with them and get acquainted with their offering.

Final Thoughts

In my opinion, Izzui is an interesting concept that is still quite underdeveloped. I personally believe that any real training will find Facebook a difficult place to live given Facebook’s intent as an entertainment site – there are just too many distractions.  The program itself is an odd mix of Izzui branding and the ever-present Facebook look & feel, so for business purposes this just isn’t a viable option.

In order to sell courses, you are limited to PayPal only.  If you are looking to build solid revenue, or even a business, you will want to avoid using Izzui for a few reasons, but mainly because you don’t own the platform (if Facebook goes away one day, so does your business) and you cannot customize it easily for your business needs. If you’re just having a good time and would like to create free courses for friends, then it’s a quick & easy way to make training and share it.

 

Justin Ferriman

Justin started LearnDash, the WordPress LMS trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major universities, training organizations, and entrepreneurs worldwide. He is currently founder & CEO of GapScout. Justin’s Homepage | GapScout | Twitter