Social lending

I was talking to my new flattie last night and all of a sudden she started talking about web 2.0. Hey wow, that's cool I thought, rather than discussing what was just on Channel E, or the scandals at one of the big 5 multi nationals (which will remain nameless) I might now get a bit of web 2.0 goodness gossip.

Well within 30 seconds she said , "well - what is web 2.0 ?- there is this guy at work that was telling me about it?". Now I was trying to explain what it was when she took over the conversation and said naaa...isn't it about "social stuff" like that social lending site - zopa. Zope what? I said. "Zopa - the UK social lending site". Funny I had never heard of it...sure enough the site is huge and there is a US based take off called Prosper that is backed by decent cash.

The concept is really neat, people lending money to other people and avoiding using banks. Zopa takes a miniscule cut. But say you want to borrow $10,000. Well, there could be 1000 people that pitch in to lend you the money in total - thats kinda cool.

I couldn't believe I hadn't heard of it, and it turned up a blank on the radar which I thought was really odd cause they are the 2.0 originators.

Apparently Zopa have filed for a patent - I'm not sure of the details of what they can actually protect.

Someone should start a similar site here - it has the classic sniff of a "Ebay" type of business that a local hero should and could own. Kiwis are patriotic and with most of our banks being owned by overseas corporations it would be great to see a kiwi flavour to social lending.

I wonder what one would need to do to start such an operation...I'll go and have a look around.