Important oDesk-Elance Announcement

Outsourcing has inevitably become a very dynamic industry. A lot of companies either big or small relied on outsourcing important tasks like their sales and marketing, accounting, IT, and web development. As the demand of these outsourced jobs increase, more professionals choose to work independently as freelancers, who very much enjoy the time flexibility and location independence.

oDesk and Elance are the big platforms that freelancers often go to for outsourced jobs or projects. These two were directly competing in the past until last year when the freelance community got surprised of the merge. We hear a lot of different feedback from freelancers. Some were excited and happy but others were quite reluctant.

So, the merge happened. Since then, oDesk had introduced several changes including the blocked invitations and saved jobs feature, the portfolio and contract linking, and the improvements to the freelancer profile. But what I loved the most was the minimum rate, which have reduced the huge pricing gap among freelancers.

And today, oDesk-Elance freelancers are still expecting for more changes to roll out. Probably, you have read the email sent last week from Fabio Rosati, Elance-oDesk's CEO announcing the initiatives that we should be expecting for the next several months. The changes are as follows:

• Improvements to how clients and freelance professionals meet each other, including better matching and redesigned profiles
• New collaboration and productivity tools for both desktop and mobile devices
• More resources to measure quality, screen jobs and help our community succeed
• Expanded customer service to provide fast, friendly and reliable support
• And so much more based on your input and a large number of R&D efforts

Furthermore, quoting from Rosati's message:

"We are eager to bring these improvements to you. To accelerate innovation we will focus the majority of these initiatives on one of our platforms, oDesk. Members of the Elance community will be able to experience the improvements via a bridge we are developing between the two online workplaces. Within a year or two we will have a new platform where everyone will access the latest innovations at the same time."

With that said, oDesk and Elance will eventually meet in one platform a year or two from now. Exciting? Somehow, it is. On the other hand, this may mean a meaner competition among freelancers all over the world

Feel free to share your thoughts. And share the love, share this blog to your friends. Thanks.