Canada's CommunityLend nears launch

We first reported on CommunityLend back in June 2007 and then again when they raised $2.5 million in venture capital. It appeared that they would become Canada's first peer to peer loan marketplace. Then, in February, IOU Central stole the headlines when they launched. IOU Central, however, was only open a couple of weeks when they closed to resolve a regulatory matter.

It now appears that CommunityLend is very close to launch. They just opened a newly designed website today. In an email from CommunityLend they announced that their "new look is "based on [their] launch design" and they "are now getting close to launching [their] service."

In addition, they are looking for people interested in setting up a borrower community on CommunityLend. From their email announcement:

"Finally, we would like to request that anyone who is interested in setting up a borrower community on CommunityLend contact Dave Coleman, our Community Advocate. Communities can be a great way to connect with people who share similar interests and help each other out financially. Examples are ethnic groups, interest groups, or even industry groups that want to use CommunityLend as a way to help finance their clients; the list goes on."

Eric's Credit Community creates Prosper group leader tool

Eric's Credit Community, a great resource for Prosper data and statistics, has created a group listings tool to help group leaders promote their loans on webpages. It's very simple, just enter the short name of the group and html code is generated which can be cut and pasted into any webpage. Unfortunately, Blogger will not accept the script but here is a screenshot of what the widget looks like using the P2P-Loans Group as an example.