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[Xenon481]

From Prosper's most recent S-1 filed with the SEC:

In addition to the applicant’s requested loan amount, listings include:

[...]

the amounts and dates of all lender member bids;

As of this change, Prosper is now specifically out of compliance with the statements made in their SEC registration.

[xraider]

Prosper continues to consider itself above the law.  Class counsel should show that to the court.  Of course, Prosper has, for years, obtained its best legal advice here so the countdown is on for an amendment.....

[Ferrix]

I guess this means the Lenders forum here will no longer be able to enforce the member rules, since there won't be a way of confirming lending amounts.

[mothandrust]

Social lending is now less social.  Peer-to-peer?  Just trust us, your peers are bidding on your loan, no need to see who...

When I signed up for Prosper, their example of groups was the "Volunteer Firefighters" and "Joe" was applying for a loan.  Another loan from those Volunteer Firefighters.  They seem like good people, and other VF's are bidding on their loans, so why don't I bid too?

So now there's no way of knowing if any VF's are bidding on the loan.  Yes, the "social lending" part is dead. 

A loan like eandr123's would today be absolutely impossible. 

Just when we think Prosper is out of ammo, they find a way to shoot themselves in the foot yet again.

[112233]

Prosper removed the list of bids/lenders/amounts/times/etc from the Borrower's Loan Request Listing page.

im not sure what those items have to do with privacy

[ira01]

Prosper removed the list of bids/lenders/amounts/times/etc from the Borrower's Loan Request Listing page.

im not sure what those items have to do with privacy

Nothing, of course.  But that doesn't matter to Prosper.  It has a long history of using bogus claims of "privacy" to avoid disclosing embarrassing (to Prosper) information. 

[Ferrix]

Prosper Version Next.0: A site with a logo and a form where you can send them your money.

[TotoMMB]

Prosper Version Next.0: A site with a logo and a form where you can send them your money.

They'll adopt Priceline's original model. You submit money and an idea of how you'd like it distributed. We'll let you know when we're done (and what we've done), but nothing beforehand. Of course, from some of the feedback, that sounds like how the "quick investing" was run.

Prosper will cease to exist by the end of this year. At least as far as accepting new listings. They'll close up shop and solely service existing loans. And this result has nothing to do with the court proceedings.

[SpoonKiller]

Hi, new guy here who just signed up so I could bitch somewhere about this stupid move on Prosper's part!  I haven't been able to bid on any loans since they removed the bid history, it feels creepy to not have this information, almost like you're all by yourself just throwing money into a black hole...  I'm running on three years with prosper, 1000+ active loans and have had nothing but good things to say about them until this disastrous move on their part.  This feels like when Netflix lost their mind and pissed everyone off when they tried to shove Flixster down our throat.

[Staneslav]

a

[Xenon481]

Hi, new guy here who just signed up so I could bitch somewhere about this stupid move on Prosper's part!  I haven't been able to bid on any loans since they removed the bid history, it feels creepy to not have this information, almost like you're all by yourself just throwing money into a black hole...  I'm running on three years with prosper, 1000+ active loans and have had nothing but good things to say about them until this disastrous move on their part.  This feels like when Netflix lost their mind and pissed everyone off when they tried to shove Flixster down our throat.

Welcome to the site.

Just for clarification, when you say you haven't been able to bid since they removed the history, do you mean that the bidding process is broken on their website or that you refuse to bid now?

I just want to make sure I understand you perfectly.

Shortly after removing bidding history, Prosper started allowing the big institutional investors to take down 100% of the loans immediately through the bidding API. And quite a while ago, Prosper changed the bidding process so that it wasn't a bid-down auction anymore in order to artificially keep interest rates high. These two things combined means that any decent loans are essentially impossible to find for normal note purchasers since they get fully funded by a single anonymous institution before it is even logistically possible to find them and bid on them.

[Staneslav]

a

[TJGbank]

Prosper will cease to exist by the end of this year. At least as far as accepting new listings. They'll close up shop and solely service existing loans. And this result has nothing to do with the court proceedings.

Care to bet $50 on your prediction?

TJG

[havastat]

Shortly after removing bidding history, Prosper started allowing the big institutional investors to take down 100% of the loans immediately through the bidding API. And quite a while ago, Prosper changed the bidding process so that it wasn't a bid-down auction anymore in order to artificially keep interest rates high. These two things combined means that any decent loans are essentially impossible to find for normal note purchasers since they get fully funded by a single anonymous institution before it is even logistically possible to find them and bid on them.

If this is so it would be quite a change, and well beyond anything Lending Club has done. It removes the last vestige of "peer to peer". Prosper would simply be providing syndication of small consumer loans to institutional investors.

I stopped investing in Prosper after the SEC shutdown, and when they restarted I decided to wait to see how the loans would perform and also how the class action lawsuit would turn out. The opportunity to get back in may have just dissappeared. Oh well. 

[NewHorizon]

Social lending is now less social.  Peer-to-peer?  Just trust us, your peers are bidding on your loan, no need to see who...

+1.

Permit me to wax nostalgic...

Chris Larsen, Prosper co-founder, said at Prosper Days 2006:

And I was thinking about this: so at eLoan, again, it was a traditional online company but traditional structure, right: it was a small group - myself and a couple of our credit analysts and our marketing people getting together in a room deciding, "Oh we need to have that kind of auto product," right?  "OK, we got that product, now how are we going to price it?"

So there's a small kind of group - again sort of elites - who are deciding what the product is, what the price is.  It's a  push-down relationship with company to people.

And this is not - and eBay is not - a [unintellible], right?  There's nobody at eBay - you know Bob [Kagle of Benchmark Capital] when he's at the board meetings -  they're not talking about what products should we have ... what's the price?  No, they're talking about creating a servant infrastructure to help all of you figure out - or those in the big lender meeting we just had, right, it's [lender] L5 sitting around deciding what product I want to create and price, right?  It's [lender] pensioner deciding - you heard all these different strategies, right?  It's [lender] Jane Boone. And all the brilliance of just those three expressing itself (sic).  It's going to be way better than a small group of eLoan execs, or Bank of America execs deciding how things should be.

We just fundamentally believe in that and I think it's been proven in the eBay experience.  So our role is to be in that servant infrastructure more than anything else.  Servant leaders, if you will.

Bob Kagel of Benchmark Capital at Prosper Days 2006:

I don't know of very many experiences in life, certainly commercial experiences, that are more dehumanizing than dealing with a bank.  And a lot of people feel that way - there's a lot of jokes about it.  And I think that Prosper has the potential to bring the human element and humanity back into this fundamental process of borrowing and lending.

Back in the Jimmy Stewart movie, "A Wonderful Life" that Bedford Falls Savings and Loan was very much providing a community service in helping people help one another.  And that's really the great promise of Prosper is that it empowers people to help one another.  And in the same way that there's the passions around the communities of interest, and the product areas, and the collectables at eBay, I think there's a similar passion but even in some sense on a deeper level at Prosper because there's this element that you're really
helping someone else achieve their dream or achieve their full potential.

And I think that's a special opportunity in life.  And as we move toward a society that's more and more imbued with technology, I think people are actually missing the human element and really yearning for it.  And I think Prosper in many respects has the opportunity to bring that back to the financial lending and borrowing business in the way that it existed many many many decades ago.

(Transcription errors, if any, are mine.)

EDIT: I got the year wrong.  I think maybe this is from the Town Hall Meeting at PD2007.