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Industry Influencer
Report for
Prepared by eCairn
Oct 3rd 2009
Lending Club Industry Influencer Report 1
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents.....................................................................................................................2
Background..............................................................................................................................3
Scope.......................................................................................................................................3
1 - Share of Voice....................................................................................................................4
Number of Mentions.........................................................................................................4
Lending Club Best Daily Buzz............................................................................................5
Prosper Best Daily Buzz.....................................................................................................5
2- Share of Mind......................................................................................................................6
People mentioning Amazon the most................................................................................6
Influence of the Lending Club blog....................................................................................7
3 – Ownership of the “Peer to Peer Lending” Topic....................................................................8
4 – Community Map & Influencers Identification......................................................................11
Influencers......................................................................................................................11
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Background
Smart marketers understand the critical role influencers have in their industry.
They are highly networked within their community, including between each others.
These are the people listened to by prospective customers because they're respected, trusted
and usually pretty independent.
They influence a brand image and the best leads come from those movers and shakers in a
particular marketplace.
Understanding who they are, how they relate to your brand and working to establish a
relationship with any of them is a critical task.
eCairn's Industry Influencer report provides a wealth of data and insights coming from those
influencers regarding your brand's, such as:
• Share of Voice
• Share of Mind
• Positioning on key industry topics
Scope
The target for this analysis is the attention experienced by the Lending Club brand in the
Personal Finance community during the period of March 2009 to September 2009. It offers a
comparison with the Prosper brand in general and more particularly, on the topic of Peer to
Peer lending.
The scope for this project is the top 1600 blogs in the Personal Finance community.
Twitter, Youtube and Forums were not used in this study.
1600 This represents 110k relevant conversations over 6 Months
NO
NO
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1 - Share of Voice
Share of voice is defined by the number of mentions of the Amazon brand in conversations
taking place in the Cloud Computing community .
Number of Mentions
The following graphs show the share of voice (graph1) and the volume of mentions (graph2) of
the “Lending Club” brand versus “Prosper” and Wells Fargo (which we use as a benchmark)
Share of Voice Share of Voice
40
30
20
10
0
Lending Prosper Wells
Club Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep
Lending Club Prosper Wells
Graph1 Graph2
Lending Club share of voice is important and above Prosper (605 versus 410 mentions *) and
Wells Fargo (490).
This represents between 0.37% (June 09) to 0.62% (March 09) share of voice i.e. percentage of
the overall discussions.
(*)Lending Club’s and Prosper’s own blogs are not accounted in the study
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Lending Club Best Daily Buzz
• March 25th: Self Directed IRA Introduction:
http://www.p2plendingnews.com/2009/03/lending-club-self-directed-ira-retirement-
account/http://www.p2plendingnews.com/2009/03/lending-club-self-directed-ira-
retirement-account/
• April 28th: Finovate: http://www.lazymanandmoney.com/live-from-finovate-startup-
first-demo-session
• May 4th: no explanation
• September 2nd: partly due to $2500 prize:
http://blog.mortgageinfotoday.com/2009/09/02/news-sign-up-with-lending-club-
for-a-chance-to-win-2500
Prosper Best Daily Buzz
• April 28th: Finovate and Prosper Re-launch in California:
http://www.wiseclerk.com/group-news/services/prosper-reopens-for-california-
lenders-nationwide-borrowers
• July 14th: SEC Registration Is effective : http://www.p2p-loans.com/2009/07/prospers-
sec-registration-declared.html
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2- Share of Mind
Share of mind is defined by the percentage of people that have talked about Amazon vs
Microsoft in the last 6 Months
Share of Mind per Influence
80% 71%
70% 65%
60%
50%
36%
40% 29%
30%
20%
4% 6%
10%
0%
Influencers Middle Magic Long Tail
LendingClub Prosper
Lending Club is more discussed than Prosper by the Influencers and the Middle Magic bloggers
but not on the long tail blogs.
People mentioning Amazon the most
The table below shows the bloggers that talk the most about Lending Club. Influencers are in
dark blue, Middle Magic in middle blue and Long Tail in light blue.
Influencers
Magic Middle and Long Tail bloggers
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Influence of the Lending Club blog
Lending Club’s blog has a solid influence in the Personal Finance community. It is ranked # 377
over 1600 blogs.
However it is lagging slightly compared to the Prosper Blog, which is ranked #268.
The Lending Club blog used to have a higher level of posting but has not posted during the last
3 weeks.
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3 – Ownership of the “Peer to Peer Lending” Topic
Ownership of a topic (the outcome of positioning) is defined by how many time your brand is
mentioned along with the target topic
Number of Mentions within the Security Topic
Share of "P2P" Mentions along with "P2P" topic
(#of conversations)
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Jun
Jul
Jul
Jun
Apr
Apr
Mar
Aug
Aug
Sep
May
May
May
Overall Prosper Lending Club
Overall Lending Club Prosper
Both brands own a sizable share of the “Peer to Peer” topic. The very last period shows a
disconnect in their trends.
Looking broadly, here are the key expressions that are mentioned along with “Peer to Peer” in
the Personal Finance community.
• Beside Lending Club and Prosper no other brand makes it to the top expressions.
Pertuity makes 1/4th of the mentions and Ing, Kiva and Zopa are distant followers.
• Risk and Return are present at the same level.
• The $25 promotion from Ing did make some buzz.
The table below shows the most frequent expressions in the Personal Finance Community
filtered on “Peer to Peer”:
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Understanding key themes in the P2P Topic
Key themes are defined by how many time a particular expression is mentioned along with the
target topic
Below is a 'theme cloud' of the most frequent themes encountered in “P2P” discussions:
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Below is a complete list of the top 100 themes found in conversation on P2P:
1 to 15 26 to 50 51 to 75 76 to 100
lending 2321 finance 374 peer-to-peer 219 personal finance 160
loans 2146 offers 370 $25 214 idea 159
money 1432 payments 361 company 214 trading 159
credit 1408 presents 360 credit score 212 companies 159
lending club 930 risk 343 listings 212 peer-to-peer lending 155
prosper 808 personal 331 direct 211 consider 151
borrowers 731 income 328 default 209 current 148
lenders 713 plan 328 fees 206 web 147
peer 628 help 322 states 199 tips 145
p2p 618 return 318 stock 198 savings account 144
fund 598 investors 316 social 195 student 144
bank 583 score 311 life 192 file 143
card 583 notes 298 check 190 ways 143
account 579 free 297 home 187 link 143
savings 577 peer to peer 293 bonus 185 system 143
debt 546 related 280 options 176 website 143
interest 537 service 276 platform 176 consumer 142
business 532 site 269 balance 174 amount 141
investing 530 online 251 earn 174 mortgage 140
financial 513 review 239 alternative 173 family 139
market 493 peer lending 236 share 170 reason 136
credit card 458 blog 234 sec 166 bid 136
investment 423 cash 233 information 164 pertuity 135
p2p lending 412 article 233 job 163 network 135
Notes:
• To make it readable, we have removed the top & obvious expressions
• Our text mining feature is in beta and the cloud above “favors” long expressions.
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4 – Community Map & Influencers Identification
Influence ranking is defined by cross references between people belonging to
the Personal Finance community
The personal finance community consists of 1600’s of influencers that blog about personal
finance topics. This does not include “stock market/investment” bloggers.
Influencers
Here are the top influencers in this Community:
URL's Influencers
http://www.freemoneyfinance.com Free Money Finance
http://www.thesimpledollar.com The Simple Dollar
http://www.fivecentnickel.com personal finance tips @ fivecentnickel.com
http://www.thedigeratilife.com A Money Blog: Personal Finance and Business in Silicon Valley
http://www.wisebread.com Wise Bread | Personal Finance and Frugal Living Forums
Money, Investing and More on Consumerism Commentary: A
http://www.consumerismcommentary.com Personal Finance Blog
http://www.moolanomy.com Moolanomy Personal Finance and Money Management Tips
http://www.mightybargainhunter.com Saving, spending, and making money | Mighty Bargain Hunter
http://www.ncnblog.com No Credit Needed Debt Reduction Rocks –
http://www.pfblogs.org The Ad-Free Personal Finance Blogs Aggregator
http://www.moneyning.com Personal Finance Blog by Money Ning
http://www.cashmoneylife.com Cash Money Life — Money Management, Small Business,
http://www.lazymanandmoney.com Lazy Man and Money
http://www.budgetsaresexy.com Budgets are Sexy
http://www.mymoneyblog.com My Money Blog - Personal Finance and Investing Blog
http://www.four-pillars.ca Four Pillars
http://www.christianpf.com Christian Personal Finance
http://www.mrsmicah.com Mrs. Micah: Finance for a Freelance Life —
http://www.frugaldad.com Frugal Dad
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http://www.mytwodollars.com My Two Dollars | A Place To Discuss Money...For The Rest Of
Influencers Map
The map below shows the connections between influencers and provides two clusters:
• The Red cluster shows a group of blogs that includes “Frugals” blogs and “Christians”
blogs.
• The Yellow cluster contains blogs that are more investment focused. It also includes
most of the blogs from the Money blog Network.
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The overall map of the community is pretty dense and it shows a fairly cohesive community (in
yellow).
There are some “small clusters” on its fringe like the green cluster which is focused on “Tax”:
Acknowledgements: Data comes from eCairn, Graphs are built with Touchgraph, Tag clouds are built with Wordle.
Lending Club Industry Influencer Report 13
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Lending Club Industry Influencer Report 14