You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Social Media’ tag.
> Posted by Eric Zuehlke, Web and Communications Director, CFI
Budding entrepreneurs, vendors, and everyday people in emerging economies are creating new ways of benefiting from the internet, using their own ingenuity in ways that go beyond the original intended use of many web-based platforms. A recent slideshow from Yiibu, a Scotland-based design and consulting firm, offers a dizzying array of examples of how people use the mobile web to sell and pay for anything you can think of, mostly in Asia along with the Middle East, Africa, and Russia.
The growth in traffic from growing economies is a familiar story (Yiibu mentions that Chinese, Indian, and Russian sites now make up almost half of the Alexa “top 20”). What’s new is how the mobile internet has opened up new ways of doing business for anyone with a smart phone. Individuals, small businesses, and major corporations are selling a jumbled mix of products and services, from cars and iPhones to handmade crafts to travel visa services.
The following post by Natalie Zuniga was originally published on the Ashoka Changemakers’ blog with the title “Join @Changemakers and @G20Mexico on October 9th for a #SocEntChat about Global Financial Inclusion.”
On October 9, 2012 from 11am to 1pm EST, Ashoka Changemakers will host a multilingual (English, Spanish, Portuguese) #SocEntChatabout promising solutions to achieve full financial inclusion. Experts and social entrepreneurs working in the field will convene and answer your questions during a Twitter-based discussion. Special guests Center for Financial Inclusion (@CFI_ACCION) and FINO (@Jatinhandoo) will join the conversation.
This #SocEntChat follows the closing of the entry period for the G2012 Mexico Financial Inclusion competition, which received 257 entries from 62 countries. Visit the competition page to check out solutions from around the world and to give social entrepreneurs your feedback.
> Posted by Ignacio Mas
Giving personal credit is about judging people. Banks have established information standards about customers, designed to make the judging process routine. How long have you lived at a given fixed address? What is your level of education and profession? How much salary do you earn? What is your history of past debts? etc.
The problem is that this standard information set is not at all standard for the informal majority in developing countries. People may not have a fixed address, they are likely to be jacks-of-all-trades, no one guarantees them a wage, and prior borrowing and repayments have left no trace.
There is much talk about using online social networks to create a new systematic profile for customers whose data is now invisible to banks (such as Lenddo). The deal seems to be: reveal more to the lender about what you do, how you spend your time, what your interests are, who your friends are, and it will be better able to judge you. With today’s computing machines, the information collected from people can be a lot more bitty and diverse, and the code will crunch it into a standard profile. Powerful stuff: now, pretty much any information can be thrown into the judging machine.
Read the rest of this entry »
Facebook
Twitter
Recent Comments