Wesabe - Web 2.0 meets personal finance
I’ll admit up front that I’m enthralled by this new web application. Not necessarily for what it can do today (though it is pretty awesome today) but for what the potential is.
Wesabe is a personal finance web app that makes Quicken look like a stuffy old paper ledger. It combines social/community networking (a la Flickr) with personal finance and provides three main tools to help you understand your finances, save money, and reach financial goals. These features are called in Wesabe; tags, tips, and goals. Tags are the by now familiar and reassuring system of labeling that ties in to others similar labels and leverages information, ie, I can see for my ‘books’ tag what others top merchants are and their ranking, what people spend on average, and what tips folks have. Tips are ways to save money that folks write up to share with others - all based on a tag. Goals are what you write to set yourself financial, uh, goals. They are shared and overlapped and available for discussion.
In order to leverage the strength of Wesabe you would upload your checking and credit card statements into your account. One of the primary concerns folks have, of course, is security, but looking at their security and privacy writeup and thinking about it I feel they are a notch more secure than the financial institution sites that I have no choice but to trust with my information. Wesabe provides a desktop uploader, like Flickr, that keeps your login info to your credit card or checking account online sites on your computer and uploads only the line item information. If you are lucky enough to have your financial institution on their list you can configure it for keeping your Wesabe records up-to-date. For the rest of us we hit our online banking site and download a Quicken or Money format file and then upload it to Wesabe.
So what is the potential here? Well, first let’s go back to what Wesabe is - a social collaboration tool focused on personal financial managment. If you haven’t connected with the growing social collaboration sites (flickr, yelp, wists, eventful, 43things, just to name a few) and seen the power of the community connecting over shared issues then Wesabe will not make sense. Building on that however can create awareness among consumers that only exists in a sliver of the population at this point and that hits home for them. How do other people work towards similar goals? How are people rating businesses, not simply on heresay, but with their actual spending? How much can we learn about loans, mortgage vs renting, insurance, retirement from a massive set of real people spending real money. Is it possible to go from there to group consumer purchases, micro lending systems (see CoolTools post), or some other group empowered system?
It’s exciting to think about the use of technology for awareness/education/change and yet I do have some concerns for Wesabe. Their is a strong focus on saving money and often that is not the only measure of an effective way to spend money. Service is an important measure. Spending local so that your money builds you community is an important measure. Finally, the technology is still young at Wesabe and there are a number of features that could work better and it seems they are hard at work on building their system. I am enthusiastic.
Wesabe reviewed at Wired, Lifehacker, Gigaom, BoingBoing, OpenSourceCU, VentureBeat, PersonalFinanceZen, A Whole Lotta Nothing, Consumerist, LunchMeet (video interview),
November 23rd, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Hi,
Thanks for the post! I’m one of the founders of Wesabe, and I’m really glad it’s appealing to you. (There are at least two Zingerman’s fans at Wesabe — that is, half the engineering department.
I absolutely agree that the lowest price is not always the best choice. We do want people to know what they should expect to spend when they engage with a business, but we also want them to be aware of the quality of service and how well Wesabe members think of the business. We definitely love businesses that are not at or anywhere near the cheapest in their markets, and by promoting the Wesabe score for each business (which encapsulates the ratings our users give), we intend to promote high-quality businesses at whatever price point.
You’ll see this part of Wesabe get built out much more in the near term. Please let us know what you’d like to see added or changed, and thanks again for the great feedback.
November 24th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Elph,
You are correct - a number of systems could work better. However, we have a ton of user feedback, so we know what needs to be improved, and we are improving. Which was always part of our plan - build what our users want…not what we imagine they want.
You make another point that really resonates with me - local. I believe Wesabe will make a lot more sense (to everyone) when you can find out useful information about your local community. We believe that tips (to help others) work when people share what they know best, and that will often be local knowledge.
Lastly, there is the issue of money vs. value. That is why we have the Wesabe score associated with merchants - we want people to be able to explicitly indicate when they are a fan - merchants with high average transactions and a high Wesabe score are probably also a good value.
Thanks for the review and the great feedback.
November 24th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Oh man, I love the panic button!
November 24th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Darn, you can’t see it without a login.
November 27th, 2006 at 9:47 am
Two more social + financial combos — Prosper and Zopa. A little bizarre.