lending

Google could be adding mortgage info soon

Add Google Mortgage to the list of potential services that might soon appear on Google's Web site.

The New York Times noticed a lawsuit pending between LendingTree, an online mortgage quote service, and a company called Mortech, which helps LendingTree run its site. The connection to Google is that apparently, Mortech is gearing up to sell that technology to Google, which LendingTree thinks is a breach of the deal between Mortech and LendingTree.

LendingTree believes that Google is planning to launch the service in late August or early September--basically now--according to the complaint. Google is supposedly going to offer … Read more

Webware Radar: Photobucket teams with T-Mobile

A correction was made to this post. Read below for details.

Photo-sharing site Photobucket announced Thursday that it has inked a deal with T-Mobile that makes it a provider of a mobile photo service for T-Mobile customers. According to the company, users will be able to send photos directly from their mobile phone to their Photobucket album, their PC hard drive, or any e-mail address. To use the app, customers will need to download it onto their BlackBerry Curve, Pearl, or any one of three Windows Mobile devices. The app is available in a free 21-day trial. Once that period … Read more

Webware Radar: Virgin looks to 'uncrunch' frozen credit markets

Financial services firm, Virgin Money announced Wednesday that it has joined the Uncrunch.org campaign in an attempt to raise awareness about alternative, social sources of credit for both consumers and businesses. Virgin joins Geezeo, Lending Club, OnDeck Capital, Credit Karma, and ChangeWave, while trying to "unthaw" the credit markets by giving consumers and businesses an online resource to research and find credit.

Uncrunch's focus is social lending, which is why Virgin Money joined the campaign (the company has close to $400 million in social loan volume). Those who surf to Uncrunch will be able to learn … Read more

Obama Inc. - Web activism for profit

A few months after Barack Obama’s historic election, and a couple of weeks after the release of Barry Libert’s and Rick Faulk’s book Obama Inc. (and, of course, Obama's inauguration), the first start-ups are popping up that directly apply some of the widely heralded business lessons emerging from the innovative campaign. The fact that most of these lessons lie in the marketing domain supports the view I’ve expressed earlier and on numerous occasions: 1) Marketing will (again) become the number one change agent in business, 2) when it follows the new rules of “marketing with … Read more

Peer-to-peer lending is not dead yet

Stories this morning in the New York Times, TechCrunch, and Valleywag are spelling the doom of the peer-to-peer lending business. Battered by high default rates, regulatory blocks, and investors skittish to fund new concepts with their own cash, the model appears to be one for happier times. In this economy, who wants to monkey around with flaky Web 2.0 financial instruments?

But perhaps it's not the model itself that's flawed, it's just the implementation and the timing. One of the peer-to-peer lenders, Lending Club, just this week received regulatory approval to pursue not just peer-to-peer lending … Read more

LendingTree sues mortgage firms over security breach

LendingTree on Monday told customers that their sensitive information was leaked in a security breach and that it has sued three lending companies as a result.

Several former employees of LendingTree are believed to have taken company passwords and given them to a handful of lenders who then accessed LendingTree customer data files, the company said.

The data includes customer names, Social Security numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and income and employment information, but not credit card information, LendingTree said in an e-mail to customers and on a frequently-asked-questions page on its Web site.

The outside lenders are believed … Read more

Kiva humanizes microlending to third-world entrepreneurs

Updated at 1:40 p.m. PST with additional comments from Shah.

For $25, you can get four collector's stamps, 25 moving boxes, or a Care Bear cuddle pillow on eBay.

Or you could help Lucía Chávez Rivera, a single mother of three, buy shoes and linens to sell at a market in Peru, and get your money back within the year.

Kiva, a peer-to-peer online microlending nonprofit organization, is changing the dynamics of microfinance by linking people who have money to loan up with entrepreneurs in developing countries who need some capital, all over … Read more