Freelancer has released research on the fastest growing freelance work categories in 2010.

After reviewing 320,000 online projects in 2010, Freelancer have reported that PHP programming dominates the web, while Microsoft skills such as ASP programming are in decline. Freelancer expects Android to lead the way in mobile application development in 2011.

“For the 2010 Freelancer Fast 50 we examined ... jobs posted on Freelancer.com, and found hard statistics related to a number of trends that are commentated on frequently in the press. We have developed a unique ability to gauge community and developer interest ahead of the traditional methods” said Matt Barrie, Chief Executive of Freelancer.

PHP dominates the web based programming language and is in the top three of the biggest absolute movers for 2010 growing 40% to 61,813 projects. The Fast 50 results show PHP continues to grow stronger as the projects recorded for the traditional programming languages declined in 2010 with Perl down 39% to just 1,466 projects; ASP down 22% to 4,060 projects and C Programming also down 31% to 5,297 projects. JavaScript was the only traditional programming language to grow with their projects increasing 42% to 13,678 projects.

Mobile based projects continued to increase in 2010. Freelancer.com reported Nokia made an unexpected revival growing by 8,700% to 880 projects but narrowly missed a place in the Top 50 due to their low volume. Objective C applications reported significant growth up 647% to 13,748 projects. Freelancer.com believes the results were spurred by the release of the iPad (debuting at 2,656 projects) and the iPhone 4 release (iPhone projects up 182% to 6,890 projects). Google Android projects up 501% to 2,813 projects and RIM’s Blackberry up 446% to 1,702 projects.

Freelancer found in their results the Microsoft based projects faced broad declines with windows desktop projects down 47% to 1,994 projects and ASP down 22% to 4,060 projects. The only positive growth for the Microsoft category was found in the C# programming up 204% to 5,786 projects.

Freelancer reported good search engine rankings never been so valuable and this saw the Search Engine Optimisation category surge in 2010 with many of its project categories appearing in Freelancer.com’s biggest absolute movers list. Article writing tops the list up 410% to 35,853 projects in 2010, article rewriting appearing second up 845% to 20,129 projects. Closing off the list is Ghostwriting up 269% to 9,507 projects and Blog writing up 126% to 11,394.

Freelancer reported in their findings social networking applications grew steadily in 2010 with Facebook applications up 364% to 11,585 projects, YouTube up 276% to 2,836 projects, Twitter up 85% to 3,066 projects and MySpace up 59% to 1,144 projects.

Freelancer also found selling on the internet is alive with eBay projects growing significantly to 791% to 3,983 projects. They also found shopping cart based projects saw growth in 2010 with Magento up 182% to 3,679 and osCommerce up 312% to 3,473 projects. eCommerce projects were also up 169% to 8,618 projects.