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[Shenandoah]

As I said before, Prosper reads my blog in great detail.  I'm a writer for Prosper.  An idiot would understand that I would not risk losing that revenue stream.  This community should be giving me credit for taking a stand even when it does risk a revenue stream of mine.

So I'm confused.  Do you think this puts your revenue stream at risk or not?  You contradict yourself within a single paragraph.
I'm not sure you yourself understand what your own goal is here 

[Staneslav]

a

[Xenon481]

He's just like 2 Mils. Bullshit excuses of grand intentions when all he wants is a few bucks.

Another unethical crook.

I have more respect for RatLadder.  At least he openly admits that all he cares about is the money.

[Staneslav]

a

[bamalucky]

Is it me or has Lazy now convinced himself & trying to convince us that this was all a grand scheme to make Prosper change the platform?

I must be stuck on stupid(or one of us is) because I believe Lazy was trying to make a sleazy buck!

[Mtnchick]

As I said before, Prosper reads my blog in great detail.  I'm a writer for Prosper.  An idiot would understand that I would not risk losing that revenue stream.  This community should be giving me credit for taking a stand even when it does risk a revenue stream of mine.

I never understood why Prosper wanted to outsource control of their blog to personal finance types (who would be allowed to fellate
one another on the corporate blog) - and you're not helping at all to make the rationale behind such a decision any more clear to me.

I call your "risk of losing your revenue stream" and raise you a "you're a public embarrassment to the people providing you with revenues".
(Not because you've identified a problem with Prosper - on the contrary, because you've invented a non-scalable dopey-blogger scheme.)

(The credit karma ceo probably needs to be given a good talking to, as well, given his surface analysis of this crap's signal value.)
(Hint:  If you pay for "social" capital, regardless of the need to approximately price the value of that capital, it's not "social" is it?)
(And not only does it cease to be "social", it also ceases to have a value even though it has a price - spin that on your mandala!)

ETA:  If anyone at Prosper was involved in your "idea", they need to realize that all you did was "re-invent" group-leader rewards.

-t

Sleazyman - this is a lender who actually still likes P-----r, BTW. If anyone was going to come to your defense, it would have been him. I also find it interesting you make a point out of NOT correcting someone for their use of contractions when people point out your writing mistakes to you, you use the "this is just a message board" shield.

[bamalucky]

I find it interesting that he hasn't posted what Rateladder has said about it.

You know he's weighed in by now.

[Heavens2Murgetroid]

Was not the originator of this discussion the one who was complaining of insults in the lobby?

[lazymanandmoney]

why not just bring it to their attention? as a paid prosper writer, it seems like you would have the necessary contacts. why go through these theatrics especially when it puts your revenue stream at risk as you noted above?

Sometimes, you can get people's attention in private.  Sometimes it's worth getting it out in the open to the public to force the issue.  Of all the people that I thought would understand this, I thought it would be this community.

Honestly, it feels like you came up with a plan to make some money along with a plan to explain it to Prosper in case they complained. It doesnt make sense to me that you would go through this much effort "to get their attention", especially since you are an insider to some degree.

Blogging about this in the same manner rateladder did about zopa's email problem is enough IMHO, as far as making it public goes.

all in all, it's not passing the smell test

I can see how you think it would feel that I was trying to make money from this.  If you want to apply the "smell test", wouldn't you say that such a proposal wouldn't get very far since I am an insider to Prosper to some degree and they read my blog daily?  Don't you think they'd start examining my endorsements for this behavior if I acted on it?  Don't you think I knew all this when I posted it?  Yes.

RateLadder got his point across, but it didn't make for interesting reading.  With all due respect to him, I think he's a software engineer and not really trying to be writer that keeps the audience captivated. 

I'm different.  I try to make my writing interesting.  Sometimes that involves trying to write good satire.  (Note the use of "try" in the last two sentences.  I let the readers be the judge.)  I don't always succeed, but when it comes to personal finance, people get really bored if you just spout off statistics about 401k plans or interest rates on loans.  When you can surround the concept with a good story it's just that much better.

I said in the post that I try to blur the lines.  I don't think any my readers really think I'm going into the tank rental business either.  I confused a lot of people into thinking that I really believe in the snowflake phenomenon of saving when I think it's someone just slapping a fancy on a concept that has existed for a long time.  That whole post is tongue-in-cheek and I got 12 or more comments from people that thought I was serious and not trying to make fun of the concept.  There were another 12 or more people that e-mailed me privately to say it was a great way to poke fun at the all the snowflake articles that were showing up on personal finance sites.

[lazymanandmoney]

As I said before, Prosper reads my blog in great detail.  I'm a writer for Prosper.  An idiot would understand that I would not risk losing that revenue stream.  This community should be giving me credit for taking a stand even when it does risk a revenue stream of mine.

I never understood why Prosper wanted to outsource control of their blog to personal finance types (who would be allowed to fellate
one another on the corporate blog) - and you're not helping at all to make the rationale behind such a decision any more clear to me.

I call your "risk of losing your revenue stream" and raise you a "you're a public embarrassment to the people providing you with revenues".
(Not because you've identified a problem with Prosper - on the contrary, because you've invented a non-scalable dopey-blogger scheme.)

(The credit karma ceo probably needs to be given a good talking to, as well, given his surface analysis of this crap's signal value.)
(Hint:  If you pay for "social" capital, regardless of the need to approximately price the value of that capital, it's not "social" is it?)
(And not only does it cease to be "social", it also ceases to have a value even though it has a price - spin that on your mandala!)

ETA:  If anyone at Prosper was involved in your "idea", they need to realize that all you did was "re-invent" group-leader rewards.

-t

I don't think Prosper wanted to manage their own blog.  It takes work.  However, they realized that if they are going to be start-up in Silicon Valley, they should have blog.

Not sure what you are referring to here with "invented a non-scalable dopey-blogger scheme."

Good point on the reinventing of group lending awards.  That's what I was thinking when they got rid of them and replaced them with endorsements.

Your comment about social capital is another point I'm trying to get across.  If you went to Prosper Days, they were touting how that "social" capital has a real monetary value in the Prosper world.  If that's true, why not the reverse where real monetary value can buy "social" capital?  I think at the very least it's an idea that needs to be explored, which is what I tried to do.

Let's say that Prosper keeps the TOS as they are.  Mr. Bad finds a loan that he likes.  What if Mr. Bad then messages the person and says he will endorse them if they Paypal him $75 bucks?  I show Prosper's information that says that loans with paid endorsements are more valuable to lenders.  As such, he's likely to get a lower rate and even more.  The bid of $50 is already in place, so I can see no TOS violation (correct me if I'm wrong).  The borrower scrapes up that money and Mr. Bad cashes in. 

Now Mr. Bad may be a horrible person, but there are a lot of potential Mr. Bads out there.  It would be pretty hard to police each and every one.  Sure Prosper can view internal conversations, but what about ones that take place offline?  Even if Mr. Bad does violate TOS, it would be extremely difficult for Prosper to prove anything.

By focusing on a hypothetical Mr. Bad you are missing the point that Prosper should be doing something about endorsements.

[112233]

You can always recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity

[Staneslav]

a

[lazymanandmoney]

Do you not understand why people are calling you sleazy?

- It's only the people in this community.  Impartial people like the Credit Karma CEO said that I wasn't.  That's good enough for me.

Do you not understand that your entire approach in this matter was unethical?

- Eating babies is unethical as well.  Do you not understand the parallels?  It seems the people in the poll here do.

Do you not understand that you portrayed yourself negatively, and others will now think less of you?

- ...I'm not concerned about this group of people thinking less of me as they already had thought nothing of me.

Do you not understand your blog post identifies yourself and your client PMI by association with a scheme, that if carried out, could ultimately result in loss of lending license, and perhaps even worse?

- By exposing this to the public, I'm giving the chance to fix or address it.  It's much better that I do it this way, then we find out that it's been happening behind the scenes.
- Do you not realize that I've done nothing illegal here?

A simple "NO" would have sufficed. 

I suspected you would answer the long way and attempt to sidestep the questions, hence the hint in my original post (Hint: A SINGLE 2 or 3 letter word is sufficient to answer all questions.)

It's not really entertaining watching you squirm for lengthy answers that don't address the questions. 

--Quote edited to make the post shorter.

I believe these questions would be "leading the witness" if we were in court.  As such, I guess the best answer would have been to object and not answer them at all.  I tried to do better than that.

[lazymanandmoney]

As I said before, Prosper reads my blog in great detail.  I'm a writer for Prosper.  An idiot would understand that I would not risk losing that revenue stream.  This community should be giving me credit for taking a stand even when it does risk a revenue stream of mine.

So I'm confused.  Do you think this puts your revenue stream at risk or not?  You contradict yourself within a single paragraph.
I'm not sure you yourself understand what your own goal is here 

I don't have a goal with my Prosper revenue stream line of interrogation.  It's irrelevant to "buying of endorsements", but other people bring it up.  If I don't address it, people will say I'm dodging the issue.  Explain to me how it matters in the discussion of someone else (not necessarily me) buying endorsements and we'll go from there.

[lazymanandmoney]

Is it me or has Lazy now convinced himself & trying to convince us that this was all a grand scheme to make Prosper change the platform?

I must be stuck on stupid(or one of us is) because I believe Lazy was trying to make a sleazy buck!

It shouldn't take much convincing.  I said it dead on in the original post.  It's clear as day in the "Why AM I Doing This" section.