My last post here generated quite an in depth discussion among the readers of this blog. This got me thinking. Where else can people go to talk about peer to peer lending? Some companies such as CommunityLend in Canada have their own communities where you can discuss p2p lending. Zopa in the UK has an active forum with over 2,700 members, but in the US while Prosper used to have a discussion forum they closed it down several years ago and Lending Club offers no such platform.
Online Forums
There are two active online community forums where people can go to discuss any aspect of peer to peer lending. They are:
1. Prospers.Org – has the largest community of people interested in peer to peer lending at around 4,700 members as of this writing. It is a very active community with over 23,000 topics being discussed and more being added every day. One word of warning, though, before you go there. There are many people on this site who lost money in the early days of p2p lending and they have quite negative opinions about Prosper and to a lesser extent Lending Club. Having said that there are some incredibly smart people on the site who remain active investors and if you ignore the negative vitriol you can can learn a great deal. There are many categories on the forum, I focus on just four: General Prosper Chat, Prosper Lenders – General, General Lending Club Chat and LC Lenders.
2. Wiseclerk – is not nearly as active as Prospers.org but has a moderator who will pretty much always answer questions posted by users. While there are around 1,700 users there is only a fraction of the number of posts on Wiseclerk as there is on Prospers.org. Wiseclerk is based in Europe so it covers several different p2p lenders but it still has decent coverage of Lending Club and Prosper. If you find that you are not getting what you want on Prospers.org Wiseclerk is a good alternative.
Other Alternatives
There are other online forums dedicated to peer to peer lending but they don’t have much traction, at least for now. Of course Facebook is a place where both Lending Club and Prosper have pages where some discussion takes place and on Twitter you can follow Rob Garcia of Lending Club or the corporate accounts for Lending Club and Prosper (although Prosper seems to have given up on Twitter lately).
Quora, the question and answer site, is another alternative that is becoming more popular. I joined Quora a few weeks ago and I intend to answer any question that is posted relating to p2p lending. Recently Chris Larsen, CEO of Prosper, also joined and Claus Lehmann from Wiseclerk is active as well. Of course, this blog is also a place where p2p lenders and borrowers can gather online. I always welcome comments and I try to reply to everyone who takes the time to share an opinion or ask a question.
There is no need to enter the world of peer to peer lending blindly. There are plenty of places to go online to learn about this relatively new concept. Let the conversation continue.
