The person of the year is you … again

My first week as a public blogger, and there’s plenty to get excited about as the convergence of Web 2.0 and banking continues. I find ING’s “We the Savers” site interesting, it’s a similar idea to the Cluetrain Manifesto, but as the name suggests concerned with responsible personal finances. Whilst I applaud the sentiment, as someone who has behaved responsibly in this area for some considerable time but has watched the value of their investments plummet in recent months, I can’t help but think individual consumers shouldn’t have been the only targets of this endeavour. I also think it’s a shame the site is US-centric – this is a global issue.

Elsewhere, the UK peer-to-peer lending site Zopa appears to be going from strength to strength according to finextra and others. Whilst the competitive investment and borrowing rates are obviously part of the appeal, the directness and transparency of the model is in my mind equally appealing as we all suffer from the effects of a failure to manage the risk of increasingly complicated financial instruments.

We’ve been seeing the effects of social computing and user-generated content spread out from the internet community and drive huge changes in media, telecommunications and marketing particularly for some time now. Recently those changes have been starting to tell on more traditional organisations in other sectors. In the current economic climate, and despite the financial pressure those organisations are seeing because of it, my sense is that that trend will only accelerate.