Just wanted to stop in and say "Hi".
Welcome!
A few general questions about the forum and Prosper:
1. What do you guys mean when you say "nominate for Lobby"? You just want the conversation to be available to the public?
Yes. Only the Lobby and Introductions are open to non-registered visitors and crawled by the search engines.
2. Can someone give me a quick rundown on what you mean by Prosper 1.0, 2.0 etc. I have a general overview, but a brief timeline with a few facts would be useful to me.
Prosper 1.0 was the original Prosper, from the end of 2005 through the SEC shut-down (which was around late-middle 2008 IIRC). It is important to note that Prosper made numerous changes over that time period, so you can't really compare late 1.0 and early 1.0 performance. For example, in the earliest days their was very little credit data available. That got added in dribs and drabs over time, and the credit scores were constantly tweaked too (the credit scores corresponding to a particular grade were repeatedly raised over time, and the lowest scores were eliminated altogether). Prosper also made less and less other information available to lenders over time, including scrubbing listings of "PII" (personally identifiable information), hiding the borrowers' location by default, preventing lenders from discussing information about borrowers, first encouraging then requiring screen names randomly assigned by Prosper, limiting then eliminating photos, etc,.
Prosper 2.0 is usually used to refer to Prosper's short-lived and unsuccessful attempt to give the middle-finger to the SEC, by re-opening for business for about a week under CA law -- until the SEC gave Prosper the big FU and Prosper shut down again, repurchasing all the 2.0 loans.
Prosper 3.0 is usually used to refer to Prosper's post-SEC registration operations, which were from about fall 2009 to the present IIRC. Of course, Prosper has made numerous changes in that time period as well, also making comparisons of early 3.0 and late 3.0 risky. For example, the elimination of bidding on interest rates.