Elance-oDesk Relaunches as Upwork

After Elance merged with oDesk last December 2013, Elance-oDesk now relaunches as Upwork. With a new name to start a new chapter comes a new freelance talent platform, also called Upwork.


Matching Global Online Talent Pool with Businesses

Today, more and more independent workforce goes online, looking for alternative career that gives them the option to work from home with flexible working hours. Aside from freeing professionals from having to work at a set time and place, this shift to online freelance is making it easier for clients to connect and work with talent in near realtime. And Upwork is positioned to lead the online work industry into a new chapter.

Businesses are already posting more than 3 million freelance jobs and conducting 100 million searches annually on the Elance and oDesk platforms.

In the U.S. alone, 53 million professionals freelanced last year. Globally, independent professionals are earning more than $1 trillion per year. Freelancers were already earning $1 billion annually via Elance-oDesk.

The new freelance talent platform, Upwork, is investing heavily in adding data science models to help match the very best workers with the very best companies.

Upwork is the driving force behind the reimagination of work and represents a new chapter of innovation. As part of the new Upwork platform, the company also debuted new features aimed at connecting businesses with quality talent faster within minutes, regardless of where the professional happens to be. Upwork’s new platform will radically disrupt hiring norms, which is most time-consuming and traditionally takes 3-4 weeks to hire.

Upwork’s innovations will make it possible to hire in minutes or less by factoring in availability and immediacy of response (i.e., is the freelancer available to engage in a chat--‐like interview instantly?) when finding freelancers.

To do this the platform utilizes:

o Enhanced matching algorithms developed by Upwork’s team of Stanford PhDs.

o A new work status feature that allows freelancers to set their availability (“Right away,” “Later” or “Not looking”).

o Upwork’s new mobile app makes it possible to post jobs, submit proposals, review applicants and contract on the fly-–enabling hires to be made from devices in minutes.

– Upwork's real-time group collaboration tool is free and made available to anyone on the web with no limitations (users don’t have to be an Upwork customer otherwise).

These new features enable immediate collaboration after a hire, allowing clients to file share and communicate with their new workers instantaneously. Support for video and integrations with popular tools such as GitHub, Google Drive and Jira are also expected later in 2015.

Upwork is based in Mountain View, California, with offices in San Francisco, California, and Oslo, Norway.

Visit www.upwork.com for more information