I was sitting around watching TV last night and caught this commercial for Prosper which started this new website that allows individuals to apply for loans or receive loans from other people. This is probably one of the most brilliant idea's I've seen yet... Here's how it works.. Person goes and signs up for a borrower account, their credit history, and identification are verified by the site. They create their loan application, describe what they want, choose a rate they'd be willing to pay, their current debts, etc, essentially their entire financial situation. When they get done creating their application it creates a sort of "Ebay Style" bidding process where those people who sign up as lenders can go and lend money to these people. The minimum amount for investment is 50$! What happens is, money is pooled. So if someone wants a 10,000$ loan, they can accept loans from hundreds of people at small amounts which gets consolidated by the Prosper website and interest spread among those investors who gave money to the borrow based upon the interest rate decided. Click Here to Sign Up for free. (They're also running an affiliate program until June 30th. I thought I'd shamelessly add my affiliate code at the bottom. However, I have signed up as a lender and this looks to be extremely cool. Micro loans on a whole new scale.) What does everyone think of this? Will it be a success? Will it be a failure? Good idea? Bad Idea?