We scour the internet to find the most interesting news on the collaborative consumption front. Here are our picks for the week:
Market News
The Promise of Peer Finance
Crowdnetic, Alphanow
The year 2014 is seeing important milestones in peer finance. Lending Club has reached $5 billion in loans originated to date. Prosper Marketplace is now hitting its stride at $369 million in originations for Q2 and the rating agencies are inching closer to developing methodologies to create more traditional-style securitizations. It appears as though the industry has hit a point of inflection, and the groundwork laid by Lending Club and Prosper offers great potential for scaling this quantum leap in banking efficiency.
British peer-to-peer lender Zopa hits $1 billion lending mark
Reuters
Zopa, which was founded in 2005 and acts as an online broker between borrowers and individuals willing to offer loans, said it has passed the $1 billion mark after lending 148 million pounds so far this year, up more than 90 percent on the same period of 2013.
Ryan Lawler, TechCrunch
Six weeks ago,RelayRides had raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Canaan Partners. Well, it wasn’t quite finished raising money. The company just closed on an additional $10 million in financing led by Trinity Ventures.
Robert Farrington, Forbes
Student loans are big business – in fact, they are the second largest amount of debt in the United States behind mortgages. As such, savvy investors have started looking for ways to take advantage of the student loan market. One of the emerging trends in this space is peer to peer student loan lending.
Sarah Perez, TechCrunch
Snobswap, the D.C.-based online shopping resale site, is one of many new entrants in a growing market focused on bringing the experience of shopping for second-hand clothing and other accessories online. And, as its branding implies, Snobswap is aiming for the high-end, luxury shopper who’s looking for discounts on designer labels, or hoping to relieve some of their own shopping guilt by selling off their own high-quality items via the online service.
New Entrants
Julian Chokattu, TechCrunch
Buddytruk is a peer-to-peer, on-demand moving and hauling platform that lets people with trucks or minivans apply to become a mover.
Anthony Ha, TechCrunch
Beacon, a Y Combinator-backed startup for crowdfunding journalism, has started a campaign for original news coverage of the protests and police response in Ferguson, Missouri. The company says that in fewer than 48 hours, readers have funded reports from multiple journalists.
Ryan Lawler, TechCrunch
Vint is a new mobile app to connect people who want to work out with those who will train with them either in one-on-one or group sessions. By doing so, its users can get highly personalized, individual training at a fraction of the cost of hiring a personal trainer at the gym.
Sharing Economy Invades Health-Care Industry
Donna Fuscaldo, Fox Business
A new breed of websites and apps are cropping up that help connect people with chronic illnesses to help them share their stories, better communicate and offer treatment and diagnosis tips and advice.
Other
Danny Crichton, TechCrunch
Airbnb has found a way to facilitate private room rentals on a global scale, across social classes and cultures. Airbnb has developed reputation systems with symmetric feedback mechanisms so that guests and hosts can get to know each other before ever meeting, and it offers an insurance policy to limit any failures of its credibility model.
The New Sharing Economy: How People Created Their Own Big Business
Katey Troutman, Wall St. Cheat Sheet
In an era in which many Americans are increasingly frustrated with the economy, it’s refreshing to learn about a source of economic growth, especially one that exists almost entirely between consumers with hardly a middleman in sight.
Eco-Business
The concept of a sharing economy has spurred new businesses in Singapore, where cars and even private homes are being given for short-term rents to tourists, which has raised regulatory issues to this growing economic model.
Move over Uber: BlaBlaCar brings a different kind of ride-sharing to Europe
Isabelle de Pommereau, Alaska Dispatch News
With 9 million users in 12 countries, BlaBlaCar, a Paris-based Internet platform that connects drivers with empty seats with passenger looking for a ride, has become one of France’s hottest start-ups. Call it the smartphone-era equivalent of hitchhiking, BlaBlaCar wants to revolutionize people’s traveling habits by being a cheaper, more environmentally friendly and social alternative to the train and plane.
