Elance and oDesk want to create Amazon for freelance

(From left to right: Gary Swart, oDesk and Fabio Rosati, Elance)

Elance and Odesk, two largest online marketplaces for freelancers, today announced their intention to merge. At first the platforms will continue to operate independently under their separate brands but it's interesting to imagine what would happen if one giant marketplace will monopolize freelance, like Amazon monopolized retail. The obvious advantage is that there will be only one place to search contractors. You won't have to register on several sites and learn how to use its interfaces. You'll submit a project once - and all potential contractors will see it. But, like with any monopoly, there is a drawback - the lack of competition. So this giant marketplace will establish own rules and won't have an incentive to develop.

However, Gary Swart (oDesk CEO) and Fabio Rosati (Elance CEO) are confident that they'll have this incentive. Because they will compete not with each other but against the traditional recruitment system.

Indeed, today's work freelance marketplaces are still far from ideal. Companies cobble together a low balled job description which has been cobbled together using previous job descriptions from other companies.  Contractors send out equally cobbled together job responses because they have no idea what the company is really wanting – and they are forced to lower their standards because of the competition.  The ones who get the jobs are the ones who spent half an hour replying to the job proposal, and even then they might not get noticed because there are so many unqualified applications to sift through.  Because the company wanted such a low price, the contractor feels that they don’t have to offer quality – after all, quality costs money. Company and contractor struggle back and forth to produce the product, and hope that neither party will screw the other. Nobody is particularly happy, but they are willing to accept the ‘good enough’ situation as it is because they don’t want to go through the dance of bidding and selection again.

ODesk and Elance leaders promise that after the merger they will be able to make significant investments in technology, including tools for more effective online hiring, seamless virtual collaboration, improved mobile accessibility and job skills development. So it will be interesting to see what they invent.

See also: Top 10 Freelance marketplaces