Prosper Warning For Low ROI & Prosperous Land Competition

With the last feature upgrade, Prosper has added a ROI calculator that will estimate the average return for certain classes of loans. It helps lenders to estimate how much risk they're taking on, and prevents people from complaining that they didn't know what they were getting into. And, if you proceed anyway, Prosper has added a big warning that you're doing something that is not recommended.

Wasn't that nice of them to let me know that a 3-year CD would do better than this loan?

And now for the competition part. I think it's likely that Prosper will place ads for some well meaning financial institution along with this Low Estimated Return warning (probably for CDs or high interest savings accounts). The reader whose guess is closest to the date the ads go live will get a copy of Banker To The Poor: Micro-lending and the Battle Against World Poverty.

So, here are the rules (for you legal-types).

• The competition will run until Dec 1, 2008. That sound be enough time.
• Guesses must be submitted by Dec 1, 2007.
  
• E-mail your official guess to prosperousland@gmail.com although I encourage you to also post your guess for bragging rights. Be sure to include a name you want used for the world to see. Since I run on Blogger, I have no good way of authenticating that you're the post owner.
• The winner will be announced upon first confirmation of ads. This will be based on my sighting, or a confirmed and verified screenshot on another blog or the Prosper forums.
  
• The winner will have 1 week to claim their prize and then the winner will revert to the next closest guess. This will proceed until the prize is actually claimed. To claim your prize, I'll need a mailing address.
  
• I'm the arbiter of disputes, Grand Poobah, and benevolent dictator of this small corner of the internet as far as terms for the competition go.
  

Happy guessing!