Hello Vittana community!
You may have noticed that we’ve been pretty quiet on the blog lately. This has been for a few reasons: We are only days away from launching a new website, and in conjunction with that we’re holding a month-long event, March Micro Madness. We went silent to pull this all together, but now we’re ready to get started and get the word out. So from this point forward, we’ll be using this blog, our twitter and our Facebook to connect more and communicate with you.
We’ll be going into more detail about our new website’s features and March Madness and what they mean for you over the coming days, but for now, here’s a sneak peek at what’s coming up:
Website: Our new website is a radical departure from our current one – it is a complete re-design and re-imagining of how to best connect our lenders and students. Your Vittana account will have some new functionality to it, mainly a profile through which you can see your lending history, view new students and do things like upload a picture. We’re taking that one step further as well, adding the ability to create, maintain and lend through groups. You can invite your friends, track the group’s lending history, post comments and see the real impact you’re having on students’ lives.
Competition: We’ve also been planning a major initiative called March Micro Madness. It’s a month-long lending challenge named after the basketball tournament that consumes our collective national consciousness during the month of March (if you’re not from the U.S., feel free to laugh at our madness, but you should still get involved). We’ve been humbled to see a true community begin to emerge around P2P student loans, and we are using the event as a springboard to galvanize greater involvement and increase awareness about what Vittana does. We’ve got a great group of people on board – bloggers, companies, colleges, passionate individuals, etc. and are looking forward to more. And we’ll be tracking things like number of lenders, dollar amount, students impacted, etc. throughout.
Overall, the event should foster some healthy competition and provide a huge benefit to some incredibly deserving students. We’ll be sending out lots of information about it over the next few weeks, but if you’d be interested in getting more involved (tell a friend! Join a group!), email us at questions@vittana.org.
I think that’s all for now – look out for more updates from us soon, and enjoy the weekend.
Lindsey is Vittana's Communities and Operations Manager.