BigGulp's report on a day spent at Prosper.com customer service. Recently back insourced from the Phillipines the customer service is still a topic of many complaints at the discussion forums.
Month: March 2007
Dzogchen view on good groups
Dzogchen analyses in this thread which Prosper groups have grown fast and larger. He uses own categories like 'distressed borrowers' to analyse group performance and found out that groups directed at some causes have experienced much higher defaults then others. E.g. in 'distressed borrowers' 12.1% are delinquent, while in 'entrepreneurs' it's 6.2% compared to 0.5 in 'computer users. techies'.
Following discussion included whether this allows predictions and if listings without groups are better risks. An asked for report was if borrowers that posted in the 'Review My Listing' did have a higher rate of defaults.
It Is Time!
I think most of you will agree that Prosper is a wonderful concept and has tremendous potential! Otherwise, you probably wouldn’t be reading this (is anyone reading this?).
But Prosper’s approach has a fundamental flaw: They have cherry-picked states to license in as a means to keep costs down.
That creates two problems:
1) Lack of consistency across the various States, which leads to borrower confusion.
2) Lack of growth opportunities.
Publicity is a great thing! It draws attention and gets people excited. I’m sure Chris Larsen has done a thousand interviews by now. Local, national and international news programs. I’ve read about Prosper in no less than then major print publications. The buzz is there!
But many potential borrowers are left wondering why they cannot have access to this wonderful tool. Some are so severely rate-capped that they list and relist without so much as a bid. They are helpless and they leave frustrated. What business wants people leaving with that?
Currently, Prosper can only grow through increased market share. While I’m confident that they have a product that is capable of such, they are leaving a lot on the table. By opening up in the other States and removing the rate-caps in the rest, they could expand their market significantly. Effectively, grow wider and deeper.
It is time for Prosper to go National! It is time for them to abandon the State-by-State licensing strategy and give Prosper members (and future Prosper members) a consistent platform to grow. I hope you’ll join me in my quest to get Prosper moving on this issue. Please visit www.baldeagleloans.com/nevada.html for details on how you can help.
Short urls to link to prosper listings, loans and groups
Based on an idea from frequencydip and using code first implemented by zieri of zierious.com I just added short urls, which are much easier to remember and do not use that much space in forum signatures or elsewhere.
Everybody can now use the following short URLs:
- http://www.wiseclerk.com/r/listing/108578 to link to a listing number (just state listing number at end e.g. 108578)
- http://www.wiseclerk.com/r/group/Apple to link to group (e.g. Apple)
- http://www.wiseclerk.com/r/glistings/Apple to link to openlistings of a group (e.g. Apple)
- http://www.wiseclerk.com/r/member/frequencydip to link to a prosper.com member page (e.g. frequencydip)
This URLs instantly without delay redirect to the prosper.com pages.
New group promotion tool for prosper group leaders
Wiseclerk today released the prototype of a group promotion tool to be used for marketing purposes on websites.
The prototype displays all open listings of a given group. They look roughly like this:
Example display for group "Apple User Group":
Example display for group "ProsperLenders":
However this is only a picture. To see the full function, which includes automatic links to each of the listings check the the example in the upper right on this website (point the mouse over a listing).
The display will automatically update daily.
Be aware that while width is fixed, height of display will automatically change according to number of open listings. Therefore placement should be carefully selected, e.g. in left or right bar of a website.
To get the code for your website go here:
http://www.wiseclerk.com/group-promotion.php
As mentioned, this is a prototype.
I did choose a rather simple layout, allowing for the group leader to put his own headline above it, or to choose a border, or to place a prosper button alongside.
Feedback and suggestions are welcome!
Two Millionaires becomes the largest group on Prosper.com ever!
With the click of a mouse late Thursday night March 1, 2007, the leader of the Two Millionaires Group on Prosper.com admitted the 5,509th member and created the largest group on Prosper ever! The one remaining challenge at the time was to beat PsychDoc's record number of loans created….
Asked about how his group succeeded in growing so large so rapidly, "TwoMillionaires1" the group leader replied that he did a lot of internet marketing in the beginning to bring new members in, and it grew from there to the point where today word of mouth from contented borrowers brings in probably hundreds of new members each week.
"It didn't hurt either to have a private website that has attracted more than 300,000 hits and 10,000 unique visitors," the group leader added.
An upcoming press release is likely to bring in a huge influx of new members over the next few weeks.
As of the date of this report, more than one and a half million dollars has been loaned to members of this popular people-to-people online borrowing and lending group, almost 400 individual loans.
Details are available at:
and