More and more businesses follow the mobile trend because it increases visibility and value to customers. It is also an effective and engaging tool for direct marketing and promotions. As such, it's no surprise that mobile-related projects soared on Freelancer.com, according to this quarter's Fast 50 report.
"The Freelancer Fast 50 report is the leading forward indicator of trends in online jobs related to industries, technologies, products, and companies. This quarter is no different, as we see the effect of ‘Mobilegeddon’ and social monetisation on the online world, and data science becomes ubiquitous among tech and traditional organisations alike," said Freelancer.com CEO Matt Barrie.
Data scientists on Freelancer.com analyzed 356,876 good* jobs performed on the platform and found a strong 22.34 percent growth in mobile-related jobs posted last quarter, up from 47,899 to 58,958. Although both Android and Apple jobs have increased, Android bested the latter with 24.85 percent growth from 14,931 to 18,641 jobs. Despite this, Apple projects still grew nicely, up at 16.36 percent from 14,935 to 17,378 jobs.
The increase is attributed to the release of new updates and wearable devices, among others. Last April, Google rolled out their mobile-friendly update called ‘Mobilegeddon.’ As a result, businesses that did not have mobile-friendly websites lost search traffic and did not show in mobile search results. This forced companies to fix their websites to ensure they showed up in Google. Apple also released its much-anticipated Apple Watch that gave rise to the development of wearable apps -- a small subset of the corresponding handheld app.
Less popular operating systems also showed movement. Blackberry jobs were still at low volume, yet up 9 percent to 307 jobs. Windows Mobile jobs have fallen by 5.7 percent with only 264 jobs last quarter.
Meanwhile, it was a busy quarter for Social Media, as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest continued to grow. Social commerce also emerged with WooCommerce -- the popular WordPress eCommerce solution -- growing a whopping 750 percent from just 129 to 1,097 jobs. Shopify projects were also up from 557 to 732 jobs, a 31.42 percent growth.
The growth in jobs relating to capturing, processing, and analyzing data has also increased 57.84 percent, from 22,581 to 35,642 jobs. Data Entry was up 47.33 percent from 15,776 to 23,242 jobs, Excel up 61.35 percent, from 12,371 to 19,948 jobs, and Data Processing up 67.42 percent, from 7,872 to 13,179 jobs.
Design, software, and Web development jobs also increased last quarter. To see more top performing jobs, read the full Freelancer Fast 50 report.
Note: Data relates to projects posted between April 1st and June 30th, 2015 compared to those posted between January 1st and March 31st, 2015.
* "Good" jobs are those which have been filtered for spam, advertising, self-promotion, reposts, or that are otherwise unlikely to be filled.
