Mistrust In Banks Will Lead To People Borrowing From… Each Other
P2P Lending, otherwise known as person-to-person lending, people-to-people lending, peer-to-peer lending and social lending, is not a new idea; it’s how lending started in the first place. P2P lending is, simply put, a loan between two (or more) people without the participation of a financial institution. Though commerical lending has been the norm for decades upon decades, P2P lending has not completely died off.
P2P lending has been seen mostly between family and friends; a father loaning his son $10k, or someone loaning their best friend $5k, for example. However, a fresher variation is becoming popular and could affect you as a domainer in many ways.
The internet has made it easier for strangers to engage in P2P lending. And the tough economic times on top of bank mistrust and a credit crunch has driven people to seek such financial help.
Now, don’t view this as a simple handing over of cash and trusting the borrower will eventually pay. There are contracts. Sites that help facilitate such loans do credit checks on borrowers for the lenders. This is serious business.
I know what you are thinking: without the threat of a giant banking being able to destroy you, people will abuse the loan: miss payments or stop paying all together. Wrong. Because other PEOPLE are involved, and not a faceless bank, people tend to be more willing to pay and do so on time, according to this Time article. They say that Lending Club, one of the largest facilitator of P2P loans, has a default rate of less than .5%. To give you some numbers to compare that to, here are some specific loans and their most recent default rates (that i could find):
Either it’s too early, I’ve lost my Google mojo, or there is a conspiracy… but I can not find what the latest subprime default rate is (from a legit source). Can you believe that? Seriously, search for yourself.
Anyways, I feel my point has been made. These appear to be a safe bet. People seem to be more willing to pay off other people than they do a bank. I’m sure that’s not the entire reason, but a good chunk of it.
This trend has been growing the past year or two, but I think we’re seeing the surface. I think this has potential to get real big. People will prefer to get their money from a person(s) at 5% lower than what a bank would give them. The banks, wanting to cash in on the trend, will likely even offer their own P2P lending networks. They’ll just offer the forum, credit checks and forms.
Mark my words!
As a domainer, arm yourself with this knowledge! This can grow into P2P lending for specific niches; people may want to loan money out to others in fields the know, understand and trust. DomainLending.com, SolarLending.com, RestaurantLending.com, etc. Even though domainers are a resourceful and motivated lot, I don’t see any of them building actual social networks that facilitate loans, but you never know. I’m more willing to bet on directories that show people where they can get loans, and information sites that educate people on P2P lending.
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A Few Trends The November Elections Could Bring Into The Spotlight
Some have already speculated on how the Obama Administration will affect our domaining industry. Even a few domainers tackled this subject:
Mike over at The Domains
Steve over at SimplyGeo
There are others who have commented, but these are good reads if you want to do some trend domaining on our next four years.
I’ve also blogged about how the election of Obama will affect stem cell research and help coin the next big green term: carbon credit. The stem cell research I believe will receive the biggest boost of them all.
Today I want to go a little further on speculating how President Obama will affect our industry. But beyond that, there are some other trends that showed up unrelated to Obama.
Net Neutrality
Perhaps the biggest victory of them all is keeping the net neutral. Obama is strongly for net neutrality, making it a top priority in his first year and saying that
“a key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history.”
I don’t think people really understand this topic, especially republicans. The most puzzling thing of the entire election, to me, was this monstrous internet support for Ron Paul, a candidate against net neutrality! The internet addicts supported a candidate who wanted to destroy their addiction! Don’t get me wrong, net neutrality isn’t the most important issue of all. But I think it’s a hell of a lot more important than it’s been treated. And it’s a far lesser worry now.
College Football Playoff System
As soon as he said it on 60 Minutes, it was the talk of all news media. Obama would like to see an eight-team playoff series replace the bowl championship series we have now, much to the delight of millions of fans. And perhaps that’s all that’s needed to push this idea into a real possibility.
Not that it lacks it, but this would breathe new life into college football overall. And a playoff system would bring big money to the cities that host it.
Marijuana
Though not exactly related to Obama, research for medical marijuana is accelerating. And last month, several states took another step forward to what ultimately could be the legalization of marijuana on recreational level.
Michigan legalized medical marijuana this past November while Massachusetts decriminalized it. Now, I’d like to tell you exactly which states have legalized medical marijuana and which have decriminalized it, but that’s a fuzzy line. You see, each state has it’s own law and definition of “legalized.” Let’s just say about a dozen states have legalized medical marijuana and about a dozen have decriminalized it.
However, the fact remains that it’s a Schedule 1 drug, meaning it’s against the federal law anyways. There is movement to change this, however.
And I think it will be legalized. There is just too much money involved. And if you want a say in it, this may be your chance.
Czars
One of the big new keywords is Czar. The word isn’t used literally, but more as a slang for people in high authoritative positions. For instance, the Chief Technology Officer referred to in Mike’s post on The Domains would otherwise be known as the Tech Czar. Obama is considering creating a position for someone to oversee the U.S. auto industry. He would be known as the Car Czar.
Keep an eye out for the Pirate Czar, Climate Czar, Energy Czar and Cyber Czar. And expect this word to be attached to many other keywords.
Change you can conceive in
Oh yes, it’s true. People celebrated on November 4th with sex. Think I’m joking? Mainstream media have reported this fact everywhere. They are called Obama Babies. This could possibly get real big. First, August of next year will be the boom. If you have a baby or baby name site, put in a special Obama section now. Second, if it gets big enough to include any baby conceived during his entire presidency, it becomes the Obama Generation.
Green
I’ve blogged about many green technologies. The election of Obama strengthens these technologies. Everything from alternative energy such as wind and solar on a large scale, and on a small scale, to alternative materials such as bamboo and alternative transportation such as lightrails and perhaps even zeppelins.
Fashion
The slim suit, slim tie look is in now, especially in the black community. His suits are made by Hart Schaffner Marx, who have an affiliate program with CJ. But perhaps the biggest fashion piece will be…
Sunglasses
Ok, this may be a bit of a reach. But if he is the Celebrity in Chief, then things like this don’t sound too far fetched, do they?
Infrastructure Stimulus Package
This time the stimulus package is not (most likely) going to be a deposit into all of our bank accounts. This time it will be for national infrastructure; things like roads, bridges, public transit and energy projects, such as work on the electrical grid to transfer wind and solar power from place to place. It doesn’t sound like it will immediately help the economy. But it will do some good, such as creating jobs and introducing more efficient transportation to areas, such as lightrails and perhaps maglevs.
Another area that may benefit on a local level are schools. This money can go towards repairs, modernization and additional teachers.
If you would like to read more about what this package may affect, read this article.
Generic Drugs
Obama wants to make it easier for Americans to import safe generic drugs from developed countries like Canada. He also supports funding for biotech generic drugs. Both of these industries will see a good boost.
Renegade
Again, perhaps too far fetched. When given the choice by the Secret Service of choosing a name that begins with R, Obama chose Renegade (Though some reports say the name was given to him and not a choice). You will now see this word have a mighty resurgence.
Patriotism
After 9/11, everyone had an American flag somewhere: on their car, their house, a shirt, a hat. American patriotism was at a long-time high. But it didn’t take long for it to disappear. How often do you see cars with flags on them? Or drive by a house with a flag on it? It’s not so common now. Americans have been waiting 7 years for something to be proud of. Perhaps this is it. Seeing how many people have shown to his rallies and his winning speech, and the anticipated turnout for the inauguration speech, I think patriotism will make a comeback.
Peace Corps
Obama wants to double the size of the Peace Corps by 2011. This is a trend I predicted back in August when I blogged about baby boomers retiring. Not sure how you can capitalize on this, other than adding it to a site aimed at baby boomers.
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How To Get Unique Domaining Ideas From Books And Movies
Many of the ideas that I write about here on TrendDomaining.com are nothing more than small websites. I don’t post about huge business models or Digg-killers. I post about small sites that you can either put up yourself, or easily outsource. These often fall into a category or niche that has potential to grow, or is just under-represented on the net. And I’d like to think that most are a bit outside of the proverbial box.
This is an example of such a site.
Everyone knows that a blockbuster movie or a bestselling book can bring attention to a real life place or subject. And as a domainer, you can take advantage of it! Someone will, why not you?
When a hit book or movie emerges, the setting or plot can become popular itself. It can be a specific travel destination that people fall in love with, a particular lifestyle, or a specific object within the story. Like it or not, books and especially movies have a heavy influence on our culture. When the 101 Dalmatians movie was released by Disney in 1996, the dalmatian became a very popular breed of dog. Parents were buying dalmatians for their kids for Christmas and birthdays. Later they found that the dalmatian was not exactly a great dog for kids. This led to a huge overpopulation and abandoned dogs.
Media has that kind of effect on us. We fall in love with movies like The Dark Knight and books like Harry Potter and we just obsess over it. Sometimes to the point of altering an entire industry. I firmly believe Harry Potter is the ONLY reason why Borders and Barns & Noble are still around. Now that the series has ended, I don’t see these stores lasting with their current business model.
Anyways, this obsession often leads to tours and pilgrimages based on the locations everyone fell in love with.
Here are a few examples of popular books and movies changing an industry:
- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, published in 1994. This book is generally classified as non-fiction and is based on events that happened in the 80s. It was a huge book and its fame is credited with increasing Savannah, Georgia’s tourism by 46% with an estimated $100m - $200m tourist dollars. People want to see the fascinating landmarks that were in the book.
- Sideways by Rex Pickett, published in 2004. The book, and highly successful award-winning movie, follows two 40-year-old men on a trip to Santa Barbara wine country to sew their oats. Throughout the story, the main character constantly rips on Merlot and swoons over Pinot Noir. No big deal, right? Well, Merlot sales dropped 2% after the movie and Pinot Noir sales increased 16%! I find that fascinating! Beyond that, Santa Barbara’s wine country saw a significant increase in tourism, especially among younger people. SantaBarbara.com even takes advantage by pointing out that they are the beautiful location the book/movie was based on.
Lost, a TV serial drama. The show hit major heights with its exceptional writing and Hitchcockian suspense. Though no one is looking to visit the island where Lost takes place (it’s fictional, but supposedly near Fiji), they are going to Hawaii where the show is filmed so they can tour the sets. Many Lost Tours already exist, such as this.- The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Geuvara, published in 1993. It covers the early travels of the revolutionary and his friend across 8,000 miles of South America roads on a motorcycle. The book and movie inspired an enormous amount of people to travel to experience South America. Some simply just moved there. Tourism to Latin America was up 22% in the first 9 months after the book was released. Lonely Planet signed a deal with theaters to hand out travel guidebooks to moviegoers. How’s that for thinking outside the box?
- Into the Wild by John Krakauer, published in 1996. This book is based on the diaries and life of a well-off college student who gives his life savings away and heads for Alaska to live a life with few material possessions. He dies at the age of 24. The cause of death is often believed to be poisonous berries or moldy seeds. Of course it’s much more than that, but I won’t go into detail here. Never read the book, but I loved the movie and especially its soundtrack. I’m not the only one, as tourism in certain parts of Alaska have doubled because of this book. Pilgrimages retracing the steps of the young man are also popular.
- Twilight by Stephanie Meyer, published in 2005. The book was very popular among young adults, particularly female, but the movie has skyrocketed this story into the stratosphere in 2008, even after poor reviews. So it’s safe to say that the city the story takes place in, Forks, Washington (pop 3k) has become a popular tourist destination, despite the fact that not a single scene was filmed there. But the small city isn’t the only thing that is benefiting here; vampire themed stuff, including vampire tours, are getting big too as pointed out here.
- Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, published 1997 - 2007. I probably don’t need to say much about this. Of course, you won’t find many of the locations in the book in real life. But there are loads upon loads of Harry Potter tours out there. All just feeding on the megaphenomena that this became.
- Blair Witch Project, an independent film released in 1999. You either love it or hate it. I personally feel it was one of the most genius movies of all time, along the lines of Star Wars. It’s not just the movie, it’s the entire package. This movie built up a huge interest on the internet, something that was never done before.
They somehow got the general public to believe that the film was real and actual footage. They did this by having a full website that contained interviews of REAL people who spoke about local urban legends and providing convincing police reports. Of course, the footage was not real. But they had people believing it before the release in 1999. The movie takes place near Burkittsville, Maryland. The hype and craze afterward was so huge that the sequel used the craze as the storyline. The sequel is a regular movie that takes place in the ‘real world.’ It assumes the first movie was in fact a movie, and that people went bonkers over it and visited Burkittsville. It follows a group of kids who visit the woods near the town and run into the ‘real’ Blair Witch. It was a great idea, though poorly executed.
So, is there anything coming out that may have a chance at altering an industry? I’ll take some guesses with movies:
- Watchmen (following the success of Sin City and 300, this can help make graphic novel movies bump superhero movies from their popularity pedestal)
- Avatar (a new way to make movies)
- Sherlock Holmes (bringing back a beloved character and may have influence on England tourism for the U.S. anglophiles, who are often female… Downey Jr… Law…)
- Jonas Brothers 3D Concert (3D is getting bigger and bigger, it just needs one more little push…)
Of course, there will be many other blockbusters, and I don’t think these will have as much of an impact as those I listed earlier in the article. But I think these have a good chance to somewhat directly influence another industry.
I won’t even bother with books as they are significantly harder to predict than movies.
In fact, this is a hard thing to predict in general. Since I’m guessing most people follow either books or movies or perhaps both, just keep your thinking cap on. I’ve given you examples of how to take advantage of the success in these industries, all you need to do now is recognise when it happens again and pull the trigger.
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Hyperlocal Dating Gone Guerilla
I’m not one to give you a link, say two sentences and move on. But this evening a domaining article made the front page of Digg, which doesn’t happen very often. And the only reason I’m posting about it is because it involves one of the geodomain ideas I had written about.
The full article can be read here.
The author basically uncovers a massive advertising campaign for online dating using lawn signs littered about towns with their respective geo+dating.com printed on it.
I unwittingly wrote about it back in August, here.
A real fascinating, and well-written article.
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It’s A Brave New World (And Other Biotrends)
I’ve got three words for you:
- Personalization
- Individualization
- Uniqueness
These have been at the forefront of trends for 2008; many of the trends this year tie directly into one of these. Now, perhaps more than ever, people want to express themselves in their own way. Well, I’ve got a trend for you that utilizes these three words to the absolute extreme: Biotrends.
It really wasn’t all that long ago when DNA wasn’t in our everyday vocabulary. It somewhat hit the news in the 1980’s with the discovery that it can be used for identification purposes. But it wasn’t until the early to mid 90’s that it went mainstream with FlavrSavr, OJ Simpson and Dolly. FavrSavr wasn’t a big hit, but the news that we can successfully genetically engineer food was enormous. I don’t really have to say much about OJ. And Dolly made headlines all around the world.
I remember when all three of these news stories hit. That was 12 to 14 years ago.
In the grand scheme of things, that simply wasn’t long ago. Hell, we’ve been on DNA’s tail since the 1800’s. And now? well, it’s so common that you can order home DNA paternity kits. It has spawned numerous companies looking to take things to the next level with DNA Personalization in a wide range of fields.
To start, let’s look how this meshes with another popular trend: dating sites. I sometimes like to combine trends to come up with new ideas, such as hyperlocal dating. If you take the growing ease and popularity of DNA testing and combine it with dating sites, it was only a matter of time that someone began using DNA to match people romantically. Make sure you send off your DNA to My DNA Fragrance and pick up some perfume before you go on that date!
Another emerging trend is DNA art, such as:
- Genome Quilts takes your DNA and replaces the four bases with patterns. This produces a large quilt that you can truly say is yours.
- The DNA Glowframe maps out your DNA on a backlit display for $900. DNA Art UK offers something similar. There are many companies that do something this, just search for “DNA art.”
Now THAT’s unique.
Bio technology is advancing at a rapid pace, uncovering new and amazing opportunities. With these opportunities comes great interest from Joe Consumer. By being ahead of the game, you can have the domains that will be needed by future end users as his field grows.
For instance, a family in Spain has a son with Beta Thalassaemia major, a rare hereditary disease. He is now 6, but isn’t expected to live past 10 years old. When discussing having a second child, they came to realize the new baby can provide a rare opportunity for their son in the form of bone marrow. However, because the disease ran in the family’s DNA, it was possible that the new baby would have it too and thus would not be able to help. So they had the embryo prescreened to make sure it would be immune to the disease, and it worked; the baby was born immune to this rare disease. So they took the blood from the umbilical cord and are now storing it for the older child for when they do the marrow transplant.
The part in the article that claims this is genetic engineering is inaccurate. The embryos were prescreened, not genetically engineered. The procedure is not even a huge accomplishment, medically speaking, and is becoming more and more commonplace.
It’s no longer sci-fi.
In fact, we are inching closer to Gattaca (actual genetic engineering), or, perhaps much further down the line, and more frighteningly, Brave New World.
It’s scary when you think about it.
So with our better understanding of DNA and the human genome, what else can we expect to come from this?
Well, the medical field is always a fantastic place to look so lets keep looking there:
- Kid DNA kits in case they get abducted or injured.
- Diets created specifically to alter your DNA.
- DNA supplements.
How about smart drugs? No, I don’t mean drugs that make you smart, although those may not be far behind. I mean drugs that are designed based on our understanding of how genes and proteins work. I found this fascinating article written in 2005 by Danila Medvedev, a self proclaimed transhumanist, futurologist and cryonicist, which speculates on the role that genetic engineering will have in the next 20 years of human existence. It gets a bit far fetched, but who knows? Most things today were far fetched at one point.
This overall biotrend is not limited to all things DNA. There are other ways to express yourself in an extreme, and 100% unique way.
There is a company that will take your bone cells and grow them on what is called bioglass, a sort of scaffold for the bone to grow upon. They will then shape the bone into a ring and put an inscription on it. You now have a ring made out of 100% your bone; the ultimate gift of something personally yours.
Or, on a much simpler, and far less painful, note: fingerprint art.
Biotrends, and more specifically genetics, are bursting with keywords. I’ll list some here, but these don’t even scratch the surface:
- genealogy
- anthrogenealogy
- transhuman
- bioengineering
- biotech/biotechnology
- bio product(s)
- biometry
- bioinformatics
- bioremediation
- remedial ecology
- biogeographical ancestry (BGA)
- cloning (and it’s other obvious forms that are already mainstream)
- nanotech/nanotechnology
- nanorobot(s)/nanobot(s)
- microbiology
- nucleotide(s)
- immunogenetics
- genome/genomic(s)
- genome analysis/gene analysis
- gene therapy/genetic therapy
- gene silencing
- genetic mapping
- genetic programming
- genetic modification
- genetic profiling
- viral genetics
- endocytobiology
- cytogenetics
- proteomics
- symbiosis/symbiotic(s)/symbiote
- haplotype(s)
- haplogroup(s)
- polymerase chain reaction (PCR) devices (cheap personal DNA kit)
- smart drug(s)
- augmented reality
- extended identity
- human enhancement
- artificial general intelligence (AGI)
Finally, lets combine this with yet another trend: robotics. This is where the transhuman and nanotechnology keywords come in. Will humans and robots merge in the future? Some think so. And they say it may be closer than you think.
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