zcommodore

Warning: DO NOT READ THIS BLOG. This blog is hosted by Prospers.org, a verboten site according to Prosper.com.

One of the amazing things about Prosper's action in sending out e-mails about "advertising" Prospers.org is that it was sent to hundreds of members who never intended to "advertise" for Prospers.org in the first place. Prospers.org had a policy that the users there have the same nickname as the one used on Prosper.com. It was only enforced on those who wanted to use the "verified lenders forums" for lenders with a minimum of $500 in loans. To be verified, a lender was required to place a note on his/her Prosper profile stating "my username on Prospers.org is xxx". Often, after getting access to the lenders forum, this line would stay on the profile since many people never edit their profiles otherwise.

Now, with this crazy move by Prosper, many lenders got the e-mail who were no longer even participating at Prospers.org yet they got a threatening message suggesting they might get suspended if they "advertise" on their profile.

There were a handful, maybe a few dozen lenders who had placed a live link to Prospers.org on their profile partly as a protest and a way of informing people that there was an unmoderated forum. As I said earlier though, most of the mentions of Prospers.org were innocuous. Keep in mind, also, that Prospers.org is completely free of any advertising and is supported only by voluntary donations. In fact, ferrix, the owner, has never asked for donations. He only put up a donation page because it was requested by the users of his site.

Prosper used to encourage people to interact and even was supportive of Prospers.org at one time. It appears that is no longer the case. The CTO and co-founder, John Witchel, used to have a blog there just like mine. However, he deleted it a number of weeks ago. There is anecdotal evidence that it may have been Witchel who sent out the e-mails with the warning like the one I posted yesterday. I looked at the extended header information on the e-mail and saw that it originated on a computer named "witchel". I've looked at some other "official" communications from Prosper and none of the others I looked at came from that computer.

Prosper has had quite a bit of publicity in the last few weeks. The number of listings took a sizeable jump due to new borrowers and I've seen a lot more bidding activity the last couple of weeks as well. In it's recent habit of cutting off it's nose to spite it's face, Prosper decided to do something stupid just when things started to improve. I'm going to be watching to see how much of a negative affect this has.

Last evening, for the first time in over a week, I spent some time reading on Prospers.org what other users were saying. The reaction from many was that they had been "on the fence" regarding further bidding but now had decided to withdraw all funds. I've documented how Prosper's growth rate has flattened. Now, just when they start growing again, they drive away more of their customers. Why?