Social Networks Disrupting Money Lending

I hope you guys find this interesting. Both of these new lending sites, prosper.com and zopa.com are using social network software to make loans to strangers. The article has some good analysis of why the consumer finance space is so wide open to deep, innovative disruption.

If you know our site, you know one of our mantra's is "connecting people to ideas and information so that they can make better decisions". With this in mind, using a social network platorm to connect individual lenders with borrowers makes a lot of $ense.

Article from Salon, "The virtual moneylender" By Farhad Manjoo.

"A new Web site allows you to borrow money from strangers in cyberspace. It may even free you from credit card debt and the usurers at the local payday loan center.

A new Web site allows you to borrow money from strangers in cyberspace. It may even free you from credit card debt and the usurers at the local payday loan center. The middle-aged woman in Janesville, Wis., who recently posted a request for $5,000 on Prosper.com, an online marketplace for personal loans, chose a screen name that elegantly distills her station in life. BusyLady52 is indeed a busy lady. By day, she works for the county in an office job; at night, she's a dispatcher for the city bus line. In addition, she cares for her aging and ailing parents and a younger sister who suffered a debilitating brain injury in 1987. Yet all this work has brought neither security nor much satisfaction, and BusyLady52 now strives to crawl out from under a lifetime of debt.

In a photograph that BusyLady52 posted alongside her request, she looks positively regal, with a fur-trimmed V-neck shawl, a pretty necklace and a bright smile. The effect is endearing, and the picture, together with a short note explaining her situation, signals authentic desperation. Like many of the listings on Prosper, this one seems to whisper, /Will you take a chance on me?"

What other industries are open to disruption?