Prosper Days 2008 - new features

[Tokyo Joe]

• Portfolio plans for everyone

bell

• Social criteria added to search

whistle

• Bidding via API

bell

• Bid source available in loan list

whistle

• 2nd loan criteria changed from 2 months to 6 months

a step in the right direction.

• "Bank account verified" icon will go away

bell

• Referral award for new borrowers raised from $35 to $50

interesting

• Washington DC interest rate caps raised to 24% while Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, and Tennessee have had interest rate caps lowered

24% won't cut it for most DC borrowers, whatever the others have been lowered to probably doesn't cut it for those states either.


8 items, 5 bells and/or whistles, 1 step in the right direction, one "interesting", and 1 bummer.

Scoring:

steps in the right direction = +1
bells and/or whistles = 0
interesting = 0
bummers = -1

0+0+0+0+1+0+0-1 = 0
Score = 0

After completing my detailed statistical analysis, I see the overall benefit of these changes to be zero.

That's better than a negative score.  But one might say that the whole Prosper Days 2008 hoopla will be about "nothing".

[Urbi_et_Orbi]

I played around with the personal portfolio plan.  It's just a prettied-up Standing Order.  Now, it does add some interesting new granularity to the SO, but if you actually try to USE some of that granularity, there is, of course, insufficient data to yield a number for estimated return.

I still think we will need to wait a few years for the platform to stabilize (not undergo radical new changes every few months) and allow for the historical data to continue to accumulate.  Right now, it's just irresponsible to try to draw inferences from just two years worth of data captured during a wildly turbulent infancy stage.

I am still taking the "wait and see" position.

[Tokyo Joe]

Portfolio plans were introduced very prematurely.  A lot of lenders will be burned on the early ones, I suspect. 

The platform really doesn't need more tinkering; it does what it's supposed to do: match borrowers with lenders, and track the transactions. They're navel gazing, when they should be taking a broader market view.  They should be anticipating opportunities, and potential dangers (multi-p2p site loan taking is one that comes to mind).  They should be bolstering the bottom line of what they already have, with better service.

Prosper needs to grow its user base, and become a more robust presence in the P2P world.  A year ago, Prosper was the first name in P2P lending; the pioneer.  Now they're losing ground to lendingclub.  I bet in a few years, lendingclub will be the first "name".

How to grow it is a complex issue; I do have some ideas on how not to grow it...