• Ebay
  • What principles did we learn from eBay?
    • User driven content
    • They’ve made it really easy to buy and sell
      • PayPal
  • What makes eBay successful
    • A global audience
    • Empowers the average person to buy and sell
    • They’ve created an environment where you feel like you can safely buy and sell across the globe
      • Buyer confidence in a realm of anonymity
    • The one place where you can find almost anything
    • People can research and shop at the same time
    • You don’t just buy, you WIN
  • What is eBay?
    • A facilitator
    • An aggregator site
      • A sandbox for internet commerce

• Kiva
  • What can we learn from Kiva?
    • Up to the minute transaction info is vital
  • Why loan and not give?
    • Creates accountability
    • Removes some of the temptation of the gift
    • Creates self sustainability
    • Self-perpetuating
    • Helps them build their own economy
    • Gives a sense of dignity
  • Decentralization of transaction
  • What are the needs that it taps into for 3rd world entrepreneurs?
    • The need for dignity
  • What are the needs that it taps into for donors?
    • Gives meaning to their money
  • What is meant by “lending is connecting”?
    • You know you’ve benefited the lives and the community
    • Kiva creates and avenue of relation
  • Explore the power of connectional applications.
    • Fulfills the fundamental need to connect in meaningful ways
      • The degree to which you can successfully make that connection is how successful the site will be
  • Other sites to look at
    • Microplace
    • Domini.com
    • Lohas.com
  • What kind of modeling are we seing
    • Is it a new way of making doing good more accessible

In the two years since it’s founding, as of this September, Kiva has distributed $11 million dollars in the form of 17,000 microloans to entrepreneurs in developing countries.

It took Kiva.org just over a year to lend out their first million but they’d lent their second only a month later. The average size of a Kiva microloan is $649.63 and their repayment rate is and astonishing 99.59%.

Kiva partners with 64 microfinance lenders in 37 different countries. Through the site, lenders can make loans of as little as $25, money is then transferred to the partner organization to be distributed and to follow up on the loan. Kiva.org is the only site that PayPal has waived it’s usual fees for.

Unlike other microfinance sites, Kiva does not charge interest on their loans so they are truly running a charitable program. Unlike conventional charitable donations however, the vast majority of investors at least get their money back. It seems like this idea is one that people can get behind. After the site was featured on ABC World News Tonight, the site got 1,000 new members and $100,000 in contributions overnight. What other charity gets growth like that?

I got my info from this article on ReadWriteWeb: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/kiva_11_million_in_loans_to_developing_nations.php

When we talked about facebook, we talked about Mark Zukerberg, so i thought is only fitting to say something about Meg Whitman. While she didn’t found eBay, she is responsible for grwoing it into what it is today.

Here are excerpts from an article I found detailing Whitman’s transformation of eBay:

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While I do think that Facebook has run a little far afield from what it was when we all joined, I still use and appreciate it for what it was originally: a way to keep in touch. Yes, we are bombarded with graffiti walls and applications but we don’t have to use them. It is still within our power to choose to keep Facebook, at least in terms of our own profiles and uses, just how we want it. For all the additions and changes that Facebook has made, I still feel much safer than I did on mySpace and I still love to use it.

It is unfortunate that using the site cuts down on personal communication, even between people who are close enough to talk face to face. When I think about it, it it a little ridiculous that I will sit and read my friends profiles and send them notes via facebook when a lot of the time the people I’m keeping in touch with are just down the hall or across the quad. However, when it comes to keeping in touch with people who aren’t that close, Facebook fulfills it’s purpose for me.

I’ve become more aware of this fact over the last year as many of my friends have graduated or moved very far away. Facebook is now our primary means of communication. The days of writing long newsy letters or emails and calling all your friends regularly just to see what’s up have gone by the way side for the most part. People just don’t have that kind of time anymore. As much as I would like to have time to call all my friends every week or so to find out what’s up I just don’t have the time. So I prefer to be able to see what they’re up to, look at photos of where they went last weekend and exchange messages a few times a week than lose touch with them all together. One of my childhood friends moved to California a couple years ago and Facebook has been an amazing way to keep in touch and honestly, were it not for Facebook, I would probably know very little about what’s going on in her life. I think we will all appreciate Facebook a little more for its ability to keep us connected when we graduate and it stops being primarily a way to kill time.