Freelancer is a marketplace where employers and employees are able to find each other. The site allows employers to post work for site members who place bids in a competitive tender process. The site also allows members to host and enter contests for which prize money is offered as a reward. Freelancers and employers develop profiles on the site as they offer, win and complete work and write and receive reviews of people they work with or for. The site's members receive a finite number of bids to use on the site, which are periodically replenished. A series of account options are offered, ranging from free accounts through to professional subscriptions. Freelancer takes a 10% fee, which can be reduced with paid monthly membership, with a minimum fee of $5. The company has recently announced its new move into home and local services, staying first in its home market of Australia. Most of Freelancer's users come from India, the United States, Philippines, Pakistan and the United Kingdom, but it is represented through its user network in 247 countries, regions and territories; and in both emerging and developed markets. The top three job categories that most frequently get job requests are IT and software, 34%; design, media and architecture, 31%; and writing and content, 13%. The company has offices in Manila, Philippines; Sydney, Australia; Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Buenos Aires, Argentina; London, United Kingdom; and Jakarta, Indonesia.
Background
Freelancer has acquired several crowdsourcing marketplaces including Get A Freelancer.com and EUFreelance.com, LimeExchange, Scriptlance.com - one of the early pioneers in freelancing, Freelancer.de Booking Center, Freelancer.co.uk, Webmaster-talk.com, a forum for webmasters, and vWorker. As of 29 March 2016, the company has set up 44 regional marketplaces and operates in 34 languages and 21 currencies. India and Latin America. On 2 April 2014, Freelancer acquired Ukraine based digital content marketplace-Fantero. In April 2015, Freelancer acquired Escrow.com, a provider of Internet escrow services based in the United States.
Legal issues
2015-2017
In December 2015 the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner 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.
2018
In March 2018 it was reported that Freelancer is facing another complaint with the OAIC. Claiming damages over $60,000 a complainant from the European Union alleges Freelancer's conduct in regard to privacy is in violation of Australian and European privacy legislation alike, a fact that would affect all of Freelancer's European customers, according to the complaint. Freelancer has not commented on the allegation.
