May, 2009

Video Competition

Posted by Savaroony at 10:38 am

We recently ran a competition asking our members to make short videos about Zopa, and we had a fantastic response. Eagle eyed Zopanoids might have noticed that we've now put our winners on the homepage. There's one from a borrowing perspective, and one from the point of view of a lender, and you can check them out on the homepage. We hope these will help Zopa newbies to navigate the site. However, we decided it wasn't fair for us to choose our winners without giving our members a say - so we've set up a vote on our forums. Have a watch and pick your favourite, but choose carefully, because we'll be sending the winner a nice bottle of bubbles!

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The Economist

Posted by Savaroony at 11:41 am

It's a sure sign that you're growing up when you get written about by publications such as The Economist, so we felt wise beyond our 4-and-a-bit years when we featured in one of their special reports last week. Here's what they said about us: 'Peer-to-peer lending platforms: These websites, through which savers pool money and lend to borrowers, have also been boosted by the crisis. Derisory interest rates are encouraging savers to seek better returns elsewhere. Zopa, a British website that pioneered the concept, says the number of lenders joining it has soared. For borrowers spurned by their banks, low-cost and unleveraged social lenders are an attractive alternative. Zopa’s boss, Giles Andrews, says new entrants like his should gain from how the crisis has undermined customers’ faith in banks’ solidity and intensified their doubts about whether the banks have customers’ best interests at heart.' You can see the whole article here.

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Comunitae

Posted by Savaroony at 9:42 am

Recently the nice folks from Communitae came to visit us, just prior to their launch of a peer-to-peer lending platform in Spain. We hope it was a useful trip for them, and we wish them the best of luck with the venture. Click here to see their video (for the Spanish speakers amongst you) and watch out for the snippet featuring Giles and Christian at the end. If you're wondering why they look so cheerful, it was biscuit day in Zopa HQ...

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Zopa’s film debut

Posted by Savaroony at 12:20 pm

‘In his student flat in Colchester, Jack Howe is staring intently into his computer screen. He is picking the team for Ebbsfleet United's FA Trophy Semi-Final match against Aldershot. Around the world 35,000 other fans are doing the same thing, because together, they own and manage the football club. If distributed networks of people can run complex organisations such as football clubs, what else can they do?’ In December, we blogged about a film called Us Now that featured Zopa. We featured alongside innovations such as SlicethePie, Ebbsfleet United and Couch Surfing in the documentary about the power of mass collaboration, government and the internet. Us Now tells the stories of online networks such as Zopa that are challenging the existing notion of hierarchy. For the first time, it brings together the fore-most thinkers in the field of collaborative governance to describe the future of government. Our MD Giles explains why Zopa is the future in terms of lending and borrowing, and if that’s not enough to tempt you, Adilowes of Zopa forum fame features as his vinyl spinning, disco DJ alter ego, explaining how Zopa allows him to be his own bank manager. The broadcast version of Us Now will be released tomorrow (12th May) exclusively via joiningthedocs.tv , and will be free to download for a limited period.

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Vote for your favourite

Posted by Savaroony at 10:28 am

You may have spotted that we were running a member competition over the last couple of months in which we asked our members to create a video explaining how Zopa works for a borrower or for a lender. We were dead impressed with the quality of the videos submitted; thanks to all the great film-makers who participated and made it really tough to choose the winner in each category! After much video-watching and popcorn-munching (any excuse will do!), we decided to award the cash prizes to Dyfed for his borrower vid, and chocmonster for his lender film. We wish them many congratulations and will be featuring their vids on our homepage soon. But what about all the other great entries? Well this is where you come in. We have a 'people's vote' currently running on our forum where you can vote for your favourite and the winner of this category gets a rather nice bottle of champers. The voting's getting interesting, so make sure you have your say and press your buttons now!

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