Mobile jobs boom

Freelancer.com has announced results from the Freelancer.com Fast 50 survey for the second quarter of 2012. A major trend to emerge from the survey was that user activity is moving towards mobile devices and there is no indication of it reversing anytime soon.

The Freelancer.com Fast 50 pulls data from over 4 million users and over 2.3 million projects to highlight the 50 fastest moving online job categories, creating the most comprehensive insight into online job trends. The data for the Q2 Fast 50 report came from 190,000 online jobs posted on the website during the quarter, making it the leading forward looking indicator for the global online job economy.

“We are at an inflexion point of the technology landscape”, said Freelancer.com Chief Executive, Matt Barrie.

“Two clear trends are evident: firstly, user activity is moving to mobile devices and the trend won’t be reversing any time soon as the other 5 billion people on this planet join the Internet, primarily through mobile. Secondly, the Internet is becoming more interactive, and the technologies that are winning and will continue to win are open standards like HTML5 and jQuery- to the detriment of the incumbents proprietary technology providers like Adobe and Microsoft”, Barrie said.

TOP TRENDS FOR Q2 2012

● One App Store to rule them all: tables turn as Apple iOS overtakes Android. The company reported previously that Android was expected to overtake the Apple iPhone by the end of 2012 for the rate of release of new applications delivered to the platform. Android jobs had been previously growing faster than those for the iPhone.

On the back of an IDC report showing dropping interest by developers in the Android platform, and further reports of lower relative earnings in the Android marketplace, this quarter, the rate of growth for new iPhone apps grew 30% to 5,112 new jobs- leaving Android behind (up 20% to 3,444 jobs). This compares to Q1, where iPhone apps were up 27% and Android up 26%. iPad jobs accelerated even faster, increasing its quarter on quarter growth rate from 19% in Q1 to 26% in Q2 (to 2,308 jobs) on the back of the launch of the highly successful iPad 2 in the previous quarter. Generic Mobile Phone jobs across the board were up 36% to 5,709.

Next quarter’s Fast 50 will be interesting as Apple released a major update to its flagship mobile operating system, iOS6, as a beta in June, with Google behind them with the release of Android Jelly Bean.

● Google changes sends Internet Marketing industry into panic. With four updates of Google Panda in the quarter, and the release of Google Penguin in April, traffic rankings have gone haywire as Google began a concerted effort to make search engine return pages more relevant to users (or, as some wags comment, more revenue for Google).

This has created great confusion right across the Internet Marketing industry (down 5.6% to 13,848 jobs), sending SEO (down 7.3%, to 9397 jobs) and Link Building projects (down 8.3%, to 6529 jobs) tumbling. Article Rewriting and Article Submission also headed for the hills as the fight against low quality content rages (down 9.3%, to 6298 jobs and down 4.0% to 2681 jobs, respectively).

Telemarketing was up strongly on lower volumes, perhaps as marketers look to other areas (up 11% to 1,104 jobs).

● Businesses look to weather the economic downturn with Business Process Outsourcing (BPO): Back-office positions, from virtual assistants to data entry clerks, were up strongly across the board. Virtual Assistants were up 18% to 3,770 jobs, demand for MS Word processing increased 119% to 1,594 jobs, Data Processing (up 16% to 21,274 jobs) and MS Excel (up 13% to 22,947 jobs) also rose quite significantly this quarter.

● Open Standards dominate the Fast 50 and Web. Web 2.0 technologies and their underlying open standards and technologies continued to rise. HTML5 continued to grow strongly this quarter, rising 20% (to 2,108 jobs). Interactive web technology jQuery (up 17% to 2,247 jobs) also zoomed up the charts. User Interface jobs had a stellar quarter, up 42% to 1,756. This activity has been at the expense of the web dinosaur and Fast 50 perennial loser Microsoft; .NET jobs fell off the edge of a cliff this quarter (down 39% to 2,919), and ASP jobs dropped 13% to 1,084.

● Facebook IPO fizzer spills over into fall in Social Media jobs. Facebook related jobs fell dramatically this quarter (down 14%, to 6,510 jobs), as advertisers and Social Media experts started to question the effectiveness and ROI of social media advertising on the back of damning reports from customers during the Facebook public offering. On the back of reports that Fortune 500s including General Motors were pulling their big ticket advertising budgets with the social media giant, Freelancer.com saw the wind disappear from the sails of the Social Media boat, with Twitter projects dropping 1.3% to 2184 and Social Media jobs stalling at 1.1% growth to 5308 jobs.

"Companies in industries from consumer electronics to financial services tell us they're no longer sure Facebook is the best place to dedicate their social marketing budget—a shocking fact given the site's dominance among users," said Nate Elliott, an analyst at market research firm Forrester, in a recent company blog post.

This data was extracted from 189,917 jobs posted on Freelancer.com in Q2 2012, up from 172,936. The Freelancer.com Freelancer Fast 50 is the leading gauge of online hiring trends.

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