Crowd labor is outsourced information work that can be provisioned automatically. It’s ideally, inexpensive, on demand, and elastic. Platforms providing such services are on the rise in 2012, promising customers lower labor costs in the short term and higher-quality output in the long term. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The CEO of GroupTalent, a marketplace for top-tier tech talent, combed through company data and uncovered a rising number of ‘stealth freelancers’ who have full-time jobs but sell their skills on the side. Could this partially explain the mystery of the missing self-employed? Read more »
A quarterly report from Elance indicates that with the lengthy economic crisis in Europe showing no signs of coming to a happy conclusion, workers in troubled countries are increasingly turning to remote work as an alternative to finding jobs in their stressed home economies. Read more »
If you imagine that online freelancing is mainly the preserve of male techies, it’s time to revise your understanding. A new survey of the sector by consultancy Zinnov reveals women make up 55 percent of the online labor pool, along with other insights. Read more »
Along with some impressive new growth numbers, online labor platform Elance offers GigaOM an exclusive sneak preview of its predictions for the future of work online. Get ready for widespread remote work, commonplace use of the human cloud and global guilds for independent workers. Read more »
Elance recently introduced video chat to its users as a new feature embedded directly into the site. That will allow employers and contractors to have face-to-face communication without having to open a different application or video chat client. Read more »
From the rise of sites like Elance and oDesk to the opinions of researchers and anecdotal evidence from knowledge workers, evidence is mounting that the future will feature a lot more contract workers. Now another survey is supporting the rise of the gig economy. Read more »
As in-house counsel charged with procuring outside legal services, corporate lawyer Nick Cronin saw how inefficient the process of sourcing professional services could be for businesses. He decided to do something about the problem, and niche online labor platform ExpertBids was born. Read more »
Imagine a future where you could take over the body of a robot from home and use it to do work at your office. Even better, when you finished your tasks, what if another remote employee could “beam in” to the same robot to get their tasks done? That’s not science fiction: It’s reality thanks to web-connected robots. Read more »
The future of work is already here. It is just already distributed, one might say. The freelance economy, microtasking, mobile workers, coworking spaces, crowdsourcing: All of these point to how work is increasingly shifting from the twentieth-century model of Taylorism (think scientific management applied to labor processes such as assembly-line production and fixed workplaces) to a more flexible, hyperspecialized and connected workforce. This report examines the new world of work, from the devices and software services we use to the growing role of social media, the importance of a group-centric mentality and how the roles of employees, managers and organizations are evolving. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The economy might not be booming but online labor platforms sure are. Last month, oDesk announced impressive growth and today rival Elance is doing the same. Elance says this is great news for US professionals who can export their services abroad. Is it really? Read more »
Will the future of work be filled with robots powered by remote humans? Will there even be a “place” to work, or will that shift online, too? Elance CEO, Fabio Rosati gives us some big thoughts on where the workplace is headed. Read more »
Blazing fast networks, cheap silicon, always-on devices and a torrent of data will fundamentally change everything — how we consume media, how we work, and even who we are. We examined 10 areas that show how connectivity is profoundly changing the present and future of technology. Read more »
No segment of the economy looks exactly buoyant right now, and small business hiring is no exception, but what does that have to do with the future of work? Plenty, suggest new reports showing that tepid hiring, is partially down to rise of freelancers. Read more »
When it comes to piecing together a career as an independent worker, online marketplaces like Elance and oDesk can seem like all upside. But is this the whole story? A small business consultant suggests these sites present an often overlooked problem for freelancers – lower prices. Read more »
I’ve been given a sneak peak at an Elance study that investigates the attitudes of “millennials” to work, their careers and job searching. Perhaps the most interesting finding in the study is how positive the millenials are about freelancing as a career choice. Read more »
Independent online workers appear to be doing relatively well, according to a report from Elance, which shows earnings increasing for online workers in 40 out of 50 states. And that’s true even for those workers are located in places where other job hunters seeking are struggling. Read more »
Despite a fairly weak jobs market overall, freelancers should be optimistic. Online labor marketplaces oDesk and Elance have both released data showing strong growth in demand for freelance workers over the past year, with both sites reporting a large increase in the number of jobs posted. Read more »
There is a new workplace infrastructure, and it has moved out of the office and into the cloud. The human cloud lets SMBs and enterprises hire top talent, reduce overhead costs, and use online technology to assemble and manage teams to work done. Read more »
You can’t innovate without collaboration, and without innovation, companies fail. There is now a whole new world of collaboration tools available to enable what can best be termed “high-impact collaboration.” These break-through tools — workspaces like Box.net, Huddle and Central Desktop or customer-powered support communities like Get Satisfaction — are made possible through the convergence of cloud computing, social software and the ubiquity of mobile technology. With these new technologies, employees can channel their passions and work together more effectively — regardless of where people are located — to accomplish their mission. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Facebook, Apple, Twitter, LiveOps and Microsoft. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Technology is making the resume obsolete. Now, some candidates send LinkedIn profiles in lieu of resumes. But sites like oDesk and eLance more closely reflect the future of resumes and how companies hire because they use reputation data to shed light on a candidate. Read more »
Freelance work is on the rise, according to a new survey by Elance — a service that helps freelancers connect with employers — and more workers are choosing the life of a freelancer, rather than being forced to work part-time while looking for a “real” job. Read more »
Demand for social media skills has soared in the past year, according to the latest “Online Talent Report” from popular freelancing jobs site, Elance, not just for marketers but for developers, as businesses look to build applications that tap into social networks. Read more »
More people are working online and they are making more money doing so, according to a new survey of web-workers by Elance, the freelance outsourcing firm. Read more »
Freelance jobs marketplace Elance has posted its Work Index (a kind of monthly “Hot 100″ that analyzes over 100,000 recent job postings and shows the skills that are most in demand) for December, together with some data for the year 2009 as a whole. Here’s the […] Read more »
