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Prosper is one of the few 2.0 success stories in the world of finance. The peer-2 -peer lending community seems to have gained some traction and with close to 500,000 members, it's caught the attention of some of the bigger players in the financial world.

Clearly, community is critical to Prosper’s success and as a demonstration of Prosper’s desire to ensure it thrives, they hold conferences (Prosper Days) for their community, the next one is in February of 2008.

The sessions include presentations from key executives, brainstorming and a keynote from the author of Freakonomics.

This is the second year Prosper has hosted such an event, videos from this year’s Prosper Day can be seen here.

It’s all too easy in a web 2.0 world to rely on the Internet to do everything, despite increasing communication and collaboration technology, there's something about meeting face-to-face that technology can’t replace.

Web 2.0 companies and others with communities need to  give significant thought to and consider the value of events to galvanize and energize their bases.

Via Bankwatch



Posted by Ed Cotton The important ad news of the weekend is Chevron's 150 second advertising buy on Sunday's 60 Minutes.

It's big, bold and epic and the purpose is to educate, inspire and try its hardest to improve the negative perception of the oil business.

Of course, the ad tries hard to be real and genuine by employing the talents of Lance Accord and a  voice-over from Campbell Scott. The result is a somewhat restrained flashback to the glory days of big corporate advertising in the mid 1980s. You can't help but feel the production dollars that were thrown into this as the multiple locations fly across the screen.

You are left with the feeling that this is a company that wants to create the impression that it wants to have a conversation, but by the looks of things you can tell its going to be very one sided. The kind of conversation where you can't get a word in.

Despite all the good intentions of the campaign, you get the message that a big oil company has created the longest and perhaps the most expensive ad ever created on American television.

It's brave of Chevron to start this tough conversation and get the ball rolling, but you can't help feeling that this could have gone much further.

This is evident because the campaign uses an old web site , complete with "token forum" that's difficult to navigate and contribute to. When you read the small print it becomes clear..

"One a topic is closed, you will be able to view all of the previous comments, but no longer be able to submit new ones. We will then have an independent organization review all of the published comments and summarize their findings, which we will post on this site within 60-90 days."

Net- We will publish a report

This isn't good enough, Chevron needs to act and do something not publish a report and let it gather dust.

It needs to start and maintain a real conversation that isn't token, but is dynamic, real and acted upon.

Where are the Chevron employee pages on Facebook?

Where are the and the hundreds of Chevron employee blogs?

Where is the the pitch to the world for ideas and open innovation?

Reading between the lines, you can't help feeling that Big Oil wants to educate us.

Sure, there's a very important job to be done, but if you want to win the battle of hearts and minds, you've got to get down off your high horse and out into the streets.

You've got to create real, vibrant communities on the internet and you've got to respond in a tangible way to those voices in the community. 

Educate doesn't mean dominate.

Big Oil needs to find a way to show us its humanity.

Perhaps before it does this, it should go back to the classroom itself and read up on what Procter&Gamble, Sun and Dell have been up to recently and learn how to reach out and invite the outside in.


Posted by Ed Cotton The rise of social networks has now become important enough for companies to create positions for people to manage them.

Warner Brothers is looking to hire someone to do this for its bands. Someone who has a strong understanding of running or fostering community.

Here are the job specs.

Main goals will be to improve, nurture and grow artist communities on the website, message board, or other area depending on the artist. You will have a lot of interaction with fans and must be able to identify influencers and trends within these communities. This is a new and exciting role within the music industry that holds the opportunity for a lot of creativity and growth.

Responsibilities/Duties:

    Manage a roster of artist communities, evaluating and improving upon community activities to build and grow traffic and quality of the community
    Be a “face” within the communities, participating in site activity, communicating with members, and occasionally in person at events.
    Manage reporting throughout your artist communities and collect and analyze data like traffic, registrations and conversion rates.
    Identify influencers and trends within the communities and come up with creative ideas around these trends.
    Understand each artist and read trends within communities to lend to the marketing of an album or single.
    Manage an in-house team to carry out community initiatives and manage community moderators and specialists.    
    Manage relationships with community based partner sites.

Job Requirements:

    Familiarity with social networking and user generated content sites and message boards.
    Strong understanding of running or fostering community.
    Some understanding of the music industry.
    Highly motivated team player able to multi-task and work in a fast paced environment.
    Self-starter who needs minimal management.
    Creative, innovative, highly organized, detailed oriented.
    Must have excellent communication skills (both oral and written)
    Computer knowledge of various applications and excellent knowledge of the Internet
    New Media and music industry experience a plus

Via


Posted by Ed Cotton The Members Project is American Express’s quest to reach out and ask the community for suggestions for worthy causes to donate to is now in its final stretch.

There are now just a couple of weeks left to vote for the winner from the selection of five finalists. However, the list is fairly predictable; in the lead there’s an educational initiative, followed by a plan to restore funding to the US National Park Service, an idea to provide wind and solar power for residential homes, safe drinking water for the developing world and an initiative to plant a million trees.

The corporation probably gives away millions of dollars a year in charitable donations and the $5 million or so it’s putting into this initiative is a fraction of the overall total. However, any cause and the initiative to reach out to gain input from the community is a good one, but couldn’t it have been a little different?

Two of the five initiatives are motions to give money to giant institutions; the US National Parks (theoretically a donation by American Express means the government has less to contribute) and the United Nations with the water aid program. Shouldn’t the program have been focused on initiatives at a local and grassroots level? Should the ideas come from more local and grassroots organizations that could have had impact in their communities?

American Express can make donations at corporate level to the giant institutions; the Members Project had the potential to work at a completely different level.

The problem lies with the “Wisdom of Crowds”, when you operate a popularity contest, it’s impossible for anything, but the giant ideas to make it through the voting process. The global ends up winning out over the local.

The Members Project has the potential to a fantastic initiative for Amex, but next year they should select a jury of luminaries and give them the task to pick a dozen or so local initiatives that the crowd gets the chance to vote on.

This change would allow the giant corporation to play an important grassroots role with the obvious positive benefit for the brand.

 

Posted by Ed Cotton cultural chasms (41.89001042401827 , -87.6708984375) Some interesting research from the University of Chicago on cultural differences.

Asia thinks about "we" and America thinks about "I".

"Keysar believes the Chinese students had an easier time understanding the director’s perspective because they come from a more collectivist society than their US counterparts. He speculates, for example, that compared with children in China, youngsters in the US are more likely to feel that it is "all about them".

In another example, he describes how a Texas corporation "aiming to improve productivity, told its employees to look in the mirror and say 'I am beautiful' 100 times before coming to work. In contrast, a Japanese supermarket instructed its employees to begin their day by telling each other 'you are beautiful'."

Posted by Ed Cotton News magazines are having a difficult time trying to imagine a future beyond the printed page.

The Economist, is one news magazine,that despite bucking the trend with increases in circulation and ad pages, is still preparing itself for the future.

To do this, it created Project Red Stripe; basically a group of The Economist’s youngest and smartest minds from around the globe. They got together in a London office provided for them by their ad agency and for a few months considered hundreds of ideas for the future.

At the end of their journey, they settled on one.

Lughenjo

It’s big, powerful and imaginative.

Their idea is to link their intelligent, highly influential reader base to projects in the developing world.

As the team writes:

“Imagine a CEO examining a business plan for a developing world social enterprise. Or when one of the 450 000 finance and accounting professionals of CFO and Economist.com can look over the books of an NGO in Nairobi. The possibilities are endless. What’s more, by allowing skilled, smart, professionals to help development organisations, they will help solve development problems with market-based solutions.”

Of course, there are other people trying to do this all over the web, but the fact a paid-for big media entity like The Economist, is even prepared to think about this type of idea is interesting.

Everyone in media might be talking about community and user-generated content, this idea takes all of that a stage further by trying to do something good for those who lack resources.

The Economist has a global circulation of around 1 million, so the impact could be considerable.

The initiative still has to be approved by senior management.

It would be nice to see other media companies think this big.

Content→Community→Action
 

Posted by Ed Cotton