Freelancer.com

Freelancer
Type Public
Traded as ASX: FLN
Founded 2009
Headquarters Freelancer
Level 20
680 George Street
Sydney, Australia, Australia
Country of origin Australia
Area served Worldwide
Founder(s) Matt Barrie
CEO Matt Barrie
Key people Matt Barrie, CEO
Darren Williams, CTO
Neil Katz, CFO
David Harrison, VP Eng
Willix Halim, VP Growth
Matt O'Kane, VP Tech Ops
Industry Freelance marketplace, Online outsourcing, Employment website
Employees 350 (Feb 2014)
Website Freelancer.com
Alexa rank 452 (April 2014)[1]
Type of site Freelance marketplace
Registration Required
Users 15,852,359 (Jun 25 2015)[2]
Available in English, German, French, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, Filipino, Dutch[2]
Launched 2009
Current status Active

Freelancer is a global crowdsourcing marketplace, which allows potential employers to post jobs that freelancers can then bid to complete. Founded in 2009, its headquarters is located in Sydney, Australia, though it also has offices in Vancouver, London, Buenos Aires, Manila and Jakarta.

Description

Freelancer is a marketplace where employers and employees are able to find each other. The site allows employers to post work to get done. Anybody is then able to offer quotes to complete the project, upon which point the original employer is able to award the work.

Freelancer has different levels of membership. Free accounts can only bid on 8 projects per month and cannot make direct deposit withdrawals. Higher tiers of paid accounts get additional bids, direct deposit withdrawals, and other features.[3]

Freelancer takes a 10% fee, which can be reduced with paid monthly membership, with a minimum fee of $5.[3] The company has recently announced its new move into home and local services, staying first in its home market of Australia.[4]

Background

Freelancer has acquired several crowdsourcing marketplaces including Get A Freelancer.com and EUFreelance.com (founded by Magnus Tibell in 2004, Sweden),[5] LimeExchange (a former business of Lime Labs LLC, USA),[6] Scriptlance.com (founded by Rene Trescases in 2001, Canada)[7]- one of the early pioneers in freelancing, Freelancer.de Booking Center (Germany), Freelancer.co.uk (United Kingdom),[8] Webmaster-talk.com (USA), a forum for webmasters,[9] and vWorker (founded by Ian Ippolito, USA).[10]

As of 8 January 2013, the company has set up 25 regional marketplaces with local language, customer service and currency support including the United States (Global), United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Philippines,[11] India[12][13] and Latin America.[14] On 2 April 2014, Freelancer acquired Ukraine based digital content marketplace-Fantero.[15]

In April 2015, Freelancer acquired Escrow.com, a provider of escrow services based in the United States.[16]

Legal issues

In December 2015 the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) found Freelancer at fault for breaching the Privacy Act by violating the privacy rights of a former user and awarded that individual $20,000 in aggravated damages when Freelancer employees publicly exposed on Wikipedia and elsewhere the individual's private information, IP addresses, pseudonyms and other details after the individual wrote several critical comments and personal blog posts about the company. OAIC further ordered Freelancer to issue a written apology to the individual and for staff to undergo additional training on the handling of sensitive personally identifiable information. Spokespersons speaking on behalf of the company expressed their intent to appeal the ruling.[17][18][19]

Awards

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Freelancer.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-04-01.
  2. 1 2 "About Freelancer.com". Freelancer.
  3. 1 2 "Freelancer Membership Plans, Earn And Save More! - Freelancer". Freelancer.
  4. ↑ Ingrid Lunden. "Online Jobs Marketplace Freelancer.com Moves Into Home And Local Services". TechCrunch. AOL.
  5. ↑ "News". Innovate it. Retrieved 2012-02-27.
  6. ↑ "Crunchbase listing for LimeExchange.com".
  7. ↑ "Freelancer acquires Scriptlance.com - article on TechCrunch".
  8. ↑ "Freelancer Grows: Global Acquisitions Continue for Leading Job Market Website".
  9. ↑ "GoRumors Article covering Webmaster-talk.com".
  10. ↑ Lunden, Ingrid (November 19, 2012). "Freelancer Buys Another IT Job Site, vWorker (aka RentACoder.com), For A Price In The Millions". TechCrunch. Retrieved November 21, 2012.
  11. ↑ , Gadgets Magazine
  12. ↑ ,Indiatimes.com "Website for freelance assignments launched in India"]. The Times Of India. 2012-02-09.
  13. ↑ , E27.sg
  14. ↑ , BNAmericas.
  15. ↑ "Freelancer acquires Fantero.com". TheAustralian. 2014-04-03.
  16. ↑ "Freelancer acquires Escrow". TechCrunch. 2015-04-26.
  17. ↑ Sharwood, Simon (11 January 2016). "Freelancer.com fined for 'reckless indifference to privacy rights'". theregister.co.uk. The Register. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  18. ↑ Redrup, Yolanda (13 January 2016). "Freelancer contests $20,000 privacy breach fine from OAIC". smh.com.au. Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  19. ↑ "‘HW’ and Freelancer International Pty Limited [2015] AICmr 86 (18 December 2015)" (PDF). www.oaic.gov.au. Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. 18 December 2015. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  20. ↑ "19th Annual Webby Awards".
  21. ↑ "19th Annual Webby Awards".
  22. ↑ "Deloitte Australia Technology Fast 50".
  23. ↑ "Stevie Awards Site".
  24. ↑ "16th Annual Webby Awards".
  25. ↑ "15th Annual Webby Awards".
  26. ↑ "BRW Fast Starters 2011".
  27. ↑ "BRW Fast 100 2011".
  28. ↑ "17th AIMIA Award Winners".
  29. ↑ "2010 Anthill Cool Company Awards".

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, February 14, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.