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Last month I posted about 'Prosper.com', which is a P2P micro finance system in US. Now here is a profile of Zopa, an UK based P2P microfinance venture

Zopa.com is another fruit of Web 2.0 and social networks, in this case applied to the field of loans, a kind of P2P, something like 'money exchange' instead of 'file sharing'. Zopa is an acronym for 'zone of possible agreement'

Zopa is the world's first social finance company. In 2005 we pioneered a way for people to lend and borrow directly with each other online as part of our continuing mission to give people around the world the power to help themselves financially at the same time that they help others.

Launched by Richard Duvall,the creator of the an Internet bank Egg.com, with an idea of having 'Ebay Of Money'. The model is based on peer-2-peer: thus whosoever in need of money, have to reports on the website zopa.com and announced how much is the requirement, for what period under, what interest he is prepared to pay. Bidders can participate (in English) with between 10 and 25,000 pounds or more if a licensing deal. Then they deposited the money into a special account in his name and under a pre-agreed annualized and then they also determine the amount of borrowing by the debtor, in packages as small as 10 pounds.
Thus Zopa tries to bring together thousands of people who can offer and borrow money so individual and achieve a better position than the banks.

In case if you are interested to know about any Indian entity based on this concept, wait for my next post on this series, anyway its name is Rang de.

Co-founders of Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia created Kayak.com to provide consumers with more comprehensive travel options in one place.

Presently the two most common way of regularly publishing your content are blogging and micro blogging. Though Blogs (like us) are technically far less complex than any other professional content management systems, but still they do require some basic knowledge of web design. Micro blogging services like Twitter on the other hand, usually serve as a platform for short, daily or hourly status reports kind of thing for their users - at 140 maximum authorized characters per entry. Here comes another service Tumblr, created by young David Karp, in 2005

Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme's HTML.

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rememberthemilk.com
Wink.com
Prosper.com

On the Internet there are numerous applications aimed at improving the performance and organization of time, although each person usually has its own method, which feels more comfortable. One of the management systems of the time spent on the Net is GTD ( 'Getting Things Done'), on whose principles Remember The Milk is based. Recently they have announced theor first gadget to Gmail, and have also released an application for the iPhone or iPod Touch.

Launched: October 2005
Location: Sydney, Australia

Wink People Search enables people across the world to search for friends or business contacts based on name, location, interests, tags, school, work, and other profile information. Wink also provides users with tools to manage their online presence and control what is displayed about them on the Web.

Prosper is America's largest people-to-people lending marketplace. Connecting people to people eliminates the need for borrowers to go through a bank for a loan—and fewer middlemen means Prosper lenders also benefit.

At a Glance
* Launched 2006
* America's largest people-to-people lending marketplace
* Over 830,000 members
* Over $178,000,000 in loans funded on Prosper

People who register as Prosper lenders set the minimum interest rate they are willing to earn and bid in increments of $50 to $25,000 on loan listings they select. In addition to criteria commonly used by institutional lenders, such as credit scores and histories, Prosper lenders can consider borrowers' personal stories, endorsements from friends, and group affiliations.

Borrowers create loan listings for up to $25,000 and set the maximum rate they are willing to pay a lender. Then the auction begins as Prosper lenders can bid down the interest rate. Once the auction ends, Prosper takes the bids with the lowest rates and combines them into one simple loan to the borrower. Prosper handles all on-going loan administration tasks including loan repayment and collections on behalf of the matched borrower and lenders.

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Update: the Securities and Exchange Commission has shut them down.