Freelancer.com, today announced their findings on the fastest growing online outsourcing jobs with the release of the 2010 Freelancer Fast 50.

The Freelancer.com Fast 50 charts the top 50 rising job categories in the online labor market quarter by quarter. The 2010 Freelancer Fast 50 is the amalgamation of those results for the year.

"As the largest outsourcing marketplace with over 2 million users and 900,000 outsourced projects to date, we are uniquely positioned to commentate on jobs conducted online", said Matt Barrie, Chief Executive of Freelancer.com, "For the 2010 Freelancer Fast 50, we examined over 320,000 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 a unique ability to gauge community and developer interest ahead of the traditional methods".

TOP TRENDS OF FREELANCER FAST 50

PHP Dominates the Web and Continues to Grow

PHP continues to be the dominant programming language of the web and is up 40% to a massive 61,813 projects in 2010, making it the top category for outsourcing on Freelancer.com and having the largest absolute growth in terms of numbers of projects gained. PHP based frameworks Zend (up 875%), CodeIgniter (up 980%), and CakePHP (up 551%) mirrored this, seeing triple digit growth but narrowly missed the Fast 50 cut due to the low volume.

It is well known that PHP is replacing traditional languages such as Perl (down 39% to 1,466), ASP (down 22% to 4,060) and C Programming (down 31% to 5,297). However, the surprise for the year was the lack of growth for would be challenger Ruby, which was flat (down 3% to 825 projects and missing the cut). Javascript bucked the trend being the primary client side language for PHP (up 42% to 13,678 projects).

With off-the-rack software such as Wordpress and Zencart continuing to use PHP as their language platform of choice it seems likely that it will maintain its position at the top of the list for a long time to come.

Mobile Continues to Grow, Android to take the lead in 2011

Mobile was definitely the new black in 2010. Back from the grave is Nokia with an unexpected and top of the charts growth of 8,700% to 880 projects; just missing out of the Fast 50 due to the low volume.

Objective C applications (iPhone +182% to 6,890, and iPad debuting at 2,656 projects) have seen significant growth (up 647% to 1,472) no doubt spurred on by the iPad and iPhone 4 releases. Google's Android (up 501% to 2,813), expected to release a vast array of handsets this year is close behind and RIM's Blackberry rounded out the pack (up 446% to 1702).

Adobe's Flash is hurting (down 5% to 13,748 projects) thanks to Apple blocking it on their mobile platforms. Based on these growth rates, we expect to see Android projects overtake iPhone applications this year.

Microsoft in Broad Based Decline

Microsoft related projects are in strong decline across the board, with Windows Desktop applications crashing down 47% on 2009 figures to 1,994 projects and ASP down 22% to 4,060 projects. Visual Basic and .NET flat at up 6% (to 12,687) and 3% (to 3,660) respectively. Windows Mobile, Active Directory, MS Exchange, and Expression were all up but didn't make the Fast 50 due to very low project volumes. The only bright spot was C# programming, up 204% to 5,786 projects. Azure volumes were non-existent (35 projects).

Content is King, or is it?

Search on the Internet has never been more crucial to finding high quality products and services, and good search rankings have never been more valuable. In response to this there has been an ever increasing focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) through search engine targeted content to ensure high rankings and maximum search exposure. As a result, we are seeing content churned out at a tremendous rate: article writing was up 410% to a whopping 35,853 projects in 2010; technical writing up 138% to 6,278, ghostwriting up 269% to 9,507, blog writing up 126% to 11,394, review writing up 444% to 6,419, and article rewriting up 845% to 20,129 projects.

Recently in technology circles, there has been criticism that search results are becoming filled with too much irrelevant content. Is Content still King, or is Content the New Spam?

Social Networks Continue to Grow

Across the board, social networking applications continue to grow. Leading the pack are Facebook applications (up 364% to 11,585 projects), followed by Twitter (up 85% to 3,066), YouTube (up 276% to 2,836), and build-your-own social network platform SocialEngine (up 279% to 1,224 projects). Social Networking as a category itself was up 75% to 8,572 projects. MySpace
trailed the pack but was still up 59% to 1,144 projects.

Sell, Sell, Sell

Selling on the Internet is alive and well. eBay projects were up a massive 791% to 3,983 in 2010. Shopping carts were strong with Magento taking the lead as the most popular shopping cart (up 182% to 3,679 projects), osCommerce was up 312% to 3,473, and Zen Cart up 377% to 1,444 projects. eCommerce projects were up 169% to 8,618.

FREELANCER.COM FAST 50
RANK
CATEGORY
PROJECTS IN 2010
PERCENTAGE UP IN 2010
1
Video Broadcasting
1487
6659%
2
Business Cards
1100
5400%
3
Templates
3269
1881%
4
Article Rewriting
20129
845%
5
eBay
3983
791%
6
Software Architecture
6076
778%
7
BPO
3777
776%
8
Format & Layout
2401
682%
9
Dating
1054
669%
10
Objective C
1472
647%
11
PSD to HTML
4428
643%
12
Voice Talent
1092
643%
13
Travel Writing
1903
618%
14
Caricature & Cartoons
1172
504%
15
Android
2813
501%
16
Academic Writing
8676
476%
17
Blackberry
1702
446%
18
Reviews
6419
444%
19
Articles
35853
410%
20
Order Processing
1736
406%
21
Product Descriptions
3351
389%
22
Apache
1521
377%
23
Zen Cart
1444
377%
24
Facebook
11585
364%
25
Web Search
4679
363%
26
Leads
8491
352%
27
Concept Design
1566
330%
28
Website Testing
1410
325%
29
Video Upload
1546
316%
30
osCommerce
3473
312%
31
Medical Writing
1412
312%
32
Corporate Identity
1566
305%
33
After Effects
1179
300%
34
User Interface / IA
2316
298%
35
Technical Support
1151
291%
36
eBooks
2591
288%
37
Social Engine
1224
279%
38
YouTube
2836
276%
39
Illustration
3815
273%
40
Business Plans
1216
272%
41
Ghostwriting
9507
269%
42
Virtual Assistant
4867
250%
43
Forum Posting
3922
245%
44
PDF
1169
239%
45
Photo Editing
1942
237%
46
Mobile Phone
3868
227%
47
3D Rendering
2544
205%
48
C# Programming
5786
204%
49
Drupal
2409
199%
50
Transcription
1038
191%
FREELANCER.COM BIGGEST ABSOLUTE MOVERS
RANK
CATEGORY
PROJECTS IN 2010
PERCENTAGE UP IN 2010 (DELTA)
1
Articles
35853
410% (+28822)
2
Article Rewriting
20129
845% (+17998)
3
PHP
61813
40% (+17508)
4
Graphic Design
33834
70% (+13908)
5
Facebook
11585
364% (+9088)
6
Advertising
12865
149% (+7698)
7
Academic Writing
8676
476% (+7169)
8
Ghostwriting
9507
269% (+6931)
9
Leads
8491
352% (+6611)
10
Blog
11394
126% (+6346)
FREELANCER.COM BIGGEST LOSERS
RANK
CATEGORY
PROJECTS IN 2010
PERCENTAGE DOWN IN 2010
1
Windows Desktop
1994
-47%
2
Perl
1466
-39%
3
Proofreading
4344
-39%
4
Web Security
1726
-34%
5
System Admin
1974
-32%
6
C Programming
5297
-31%
7
XML
4434
-25%
8
Accounting
1281
-24%
9
ASP
4060
-22%
10
Flash
13748
-5%

This data was extracted from more than 320,000 projects posted on Freelancer.com in 2010 and excludes project volumes of less than 1,000. The Freelancer.com Freelancer Fast 50 is the leading gauge of online hiring trends.