Technically Speaking

No surprises here today. Digg has been talked about in the past on a variety of sites out there as being a totally gamed system. Yet, with the foreknowledge of the gaming that goes on there, people still rely on it as the what is hot and what is not story of the minute.

The thing that disturbs me somewhat is the owners of Digg are more or less anti-establishment as they come, but still the same - they are turning into the man. Instead of, as a great sports entertainer of our time coined the phrase, “To be the man, you have to beat the man!”, they are just saying “Hell we may as well be the man.”

What say I? Well I have a rather good resource that tells me that the blog over on Lending Club has been permanently buried. Strange, for some reason because this post made page 1 of digg a few weeks back, our next post that went on digg was denied page 1 status, as well as an earlier attempt post page 1. The reasoning is laughable at best. Due to the blog being a financial blog, it’s buried. Plain and simple. Grant it these posts are all written with the intent of getting on Digg, but also with the intent of spreading good financial information in a light and humorous down to earth way.

Now I say that is one of the more stupid reasons to be buried on Digg. Why is it that a blog that is purely written as a resource on p2p lending and personal finance be buried? Is it perhaps that as we have mentioned many times on the LC blog, people are really that afraid of talking about personal finance?

Interesting still the same. There is really nothing new here, we all know that Digg is a game at best. Do the really best stories get to page one, or are they the ones that are granted that right? Now my good blogging friend over on CN, Allen has used Digg and played within the system set up. I for one am glad, as earlier this month I showed how his statistics have climbed in astronomical ways. I don’t begrudge him at all for using Digg.

Digg is there for the technology oriented blogs. The “man’s” stamp of approval and free pass is quite evident. Now CN deserves it. I have watched personally, as many of you have, watched CN climb in status as a blog to watch in his quest to take on the man. He is now becoming the powerhouse blog that he set out to be. Yes, he has used every trick of the trade, but he also has some of the most compelling and quality articles you won’t find elsewhere.

So on one hand, I can say “Digg is good for blogging”. On the other hand, the LC blog while still in it’s infancy as a blog, has done quite well. It’s solid and has many articles to read. Some more helpful than others, some with a bit of personal humor from our group of bloggers, and some are long reads like the last series that ran in the entire month of December. Our variety of all original material is pretty good if I say so myself.

Now I think that qualifies us to be on Digg page 1 every once in awhile. I guess the “man” who is trying to be so anti-establishment on the outside, but truly nothing more than the people we all despised in our cubicle dwelling days. “The Man“. If Digg truly wants to be the place where mainstream America will go after they sell for what I have read to be between $150-300 million, they need to correct this.

Technically Speaking, while maybe Digg really doesn’t care and I’m sure will gladly take that $150-300 million; don’t blame them at all, take the money dude, I still feel that if you are truly going to be a true resource of what is hot and what is not for the day - you really need to fix this. Maybe they will want to discuss this in person, or maybe they will want to talk about how Lookery can help them out. I seriously doubt it, but for those of you in the San Francisco area the first week of February, I will be in town. If you want to meet and chat about Lookery or anything, drop me a line.

To be quite honest, I have actually found Mahalo more user friendly these days.

Full Disclosure: Rex Dixon is the Director of Social Media Content for Lending Club and works as Publisher Relations for Lookery. nutritional supplements

Lending Club, the rapidly growing affinity-based social lending network that launched its people-to-people lending services six months ago to facilitate personal loans based on affinities or an individual’s social connections, today announced its availability to lenders and borrowers in all 50 states. For the first time, everyone nationwide can use Lending Club’s P2P lending services and enjoy better interest rates than those offered by traditional banks or credit cards.

Caught in the wake of the credit crisis, people in every community across America are looking for alternatives to traditional banks and credit institutions to help meet their financial needs. Over the course of the last six months, lenders have earned an average 12.2 percent annualized return after fees and losses.

Members of Lending Club have loaned and borrowed more than $3.5 million within the network, growing 100 percent monthly since it launched six months ago. To help people identify lending and borrowing opportunities, Lending Club uses its proprietary affinity-matching technology, LendingMatch (TM). See these statistics for more information.

Open to individual borrowers with credit scores at or above 640 and a debt-to-income ratio of 30 percent or less. Borrowers can apply for personal loans of $500 to $25,000 to be funded by one or many individual lenders.

Lending Club is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA and was funded back in August by Norwest Venture Partners and Canaan Partners.

Technically Speaking, Full Disclosure: Rex Dixon is the Director of Social Media Content for Lending Club. Lending Club blog is here.

About the only thing that is interesting this morning, unless you are in the EU and are buying an unlocked iPhone. Thankfully (it’s early, but tomorrow is Thanksgiving!) I work with some smart dudes who converted me over to a Mac. The switch was painless, and OS X is hands down a much better OS than Vista!

Technically Speaking, if you get the chance this holiday season, switch to a Mac and consider some of the new features and referral program available with Lending Club’s p2p lending!

Lending Club, the rapidly growing people-to-people (P2P) lending service, today announced the company’s commitment to releasing its affinity-based lending application across Google’s OpenSocial, a new platform for building social applications across the Web.

The significance of this announcement is the fact that Lending Club began as a startup that gained momentum via the Facebook open developer platform. Now without regard to the question of “will lightening strike twice”, they are now taking the lead as the p2p lending company to first announce it’s intentions of providing p2p lending across the Google Open Social network.

While the biggest p2p lender Prosper continues to make headlines by taking more money, Lending Club is taking the social express train that Open Social promises by making a commitment to be there first.

While this is not an earth shattering announced race to mars, it is an important push to be at the forefront of p2p lending. The Open Social platform has the potential to do what the Facebook open developer platform did - further entrenching the Lending Club name as synonymous with the consumer mind set when they think of p2p lending.

To help people identify lending and borrowing opportunities, Lending Club uses its proprietary affinity-matching technology, LendingMatch™, which looks at factors such as where a person went to school, where they grew up, what they do for a living and their network associations. LendingMatch™ instantly recommends diversified portfolios based on these affinities and ensures the creditworthiness of each borrower.

Lending Club is available to individual borrowers with credit scores at or above 640. They are headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA, with $10.26 million in funding from Norwest Venture Partners and Canaan Partners taken back in August of this year.

Full Disclosure: Rex Dixon works for Lending Club as their Director of Social Media Content.

More Coverage: CenterNetworks
More Coverage: BusinessNewsWire
More Coverage: Lending Club blog

Social Security Cost of Living Adjustment - Each year, the Social Security Administration adjusts its benefit amounts to account for inflation. The numbers for 2008 are out, and they were recently reported in USA Today. … read more posted 11/5/2007 - 7:04am PDT

Gambling away wealth - Gary Hoffman is in the news after he seemingly won $1.6 million dollars playing nickel slots on an Indian reservation in New Mexico. He says he became ‘ecstatic’ when the machine said he had won $1,596,244. … read more posted 11/5/2007 - 11:15am PDT