vWorker

vWorker
Type of business Private company
Available in English
Founded 2001 (2001)
Headquarters Tampa, Florida
Area served Worldwide
Founder(s) Ian Ippolito, CEO
Industry Internet
Online employment
Freelance marketplace
Slogan(s) More capable, accountable and affordable. Guaranteed.
Website vworker.com
Alexa rank 2566 (as of September 2011)[1]
Registration Required for posting projects and applying for jobs
Users 2.5 million[2]
Current status Acquired by Freelancer.com on 19th of November 2012
VWorker
Alexa rank 390,459 (April 2014)[3]

vWorker was an online portal and teleworking employment agency that enabled companies to outsource projects and independent contractors to find work. Together with Elance, Freelancer, Guru, and oDesk, it was one of the largest global freelance marketplaces of its kind.

On the 19th of November 2012, Freelancer acquired vWorker.[4]

Background

vWorker was founded in 2001 in Tampa, Florida by Ian Ippolito under the name of Rent A Coder. Ippolito had previously launched the Planet Source Code website for sharing the source code of computer programs and wanted to create a platform for intermediating paid programming projects.[5][6][7]

The type of job board that he had in mind differed from a static Craigslist-type online bulletin board by being enriched with features that would exclude the possibility that employers give out advance payments for work that does not get delivered when agreed or that does not meet their requirements, and the chance that contractors deliver their work online but never hear back from employers who choose not to pay.[5][7] These protective features included time tracking software for pay-for-time projects, escrow accounts into which employers place the funds for a job and from which the mediating company pays contractors when the work is delivered, arbitration support for settling disputes, and a double blind rating system from previous employers and contractors for reputation management to build trust and credibility between parties who do not know each other.[8] At the time the features were introduced, Rent A Coder was the first online marketplace to protect both employers and employees with escrowing and arbitration.[7]

vWorker invented a number of innovative features including trialsourcing, in which a competition is used for an initial sample of work, before hiring the freelancer in a traditional outsourcing manner.

The company grew rapidly with the general proliferation of online businesses and was named by the Inc. magazine one of the 5000 fastest growing private companies in the United States in 2007–2010.[9] Contributing factors to its growth were improved technological infrastructures (high-speed internet, open source and rapid development tools),[8] increased competition and demand for expertise not available internally,[10][11] and the late-2000s financial crisis that made employers look for project-based alternatives to full-time employment,[10][12][13][14] while the smaller number of available full-time jobs in people's immediate physical location made many of them become self-employed or try freelancing to earn additional income.[11][15]

On April 15, 2010, the site expanded to a hundred new work categories that included, in addition to programming, also graphic design, writing, personal assistance, paralegal work, and others. To reflect the wider site audience, the company changed its name to vWorker, short for "virtual worker".[12][16]

On 17 November 2012, the site reported that since inception 1.3 million projects have been posted with users earning $139 million.[17]

Business model

vWorker allowed employers to post projects and jobs on the website. Workers who were registered with the site competed for the opportunity to work on the projects by posting bids. Employers chose the bid they preferred and escrowed the funds with vWorker. When job were completed, employer authorized the release of the funds to the worker.[18][19][20][21][22]

Employers did not pay any fees to list their jobs and workers were not charged subscription fees. vWorker made money by charging 6.5%–9% commission fees on successfully completed hourly projects and 7.5%–15% fees on fixed price projects; the commissions included strictly enforced arbitration and payment guarantees.[12][22][23]

According to the model described, vWorker was not a freelance marketplace in a traditional sense where workers created works on their own initiative, and then try to market and sell them while keeping the copyright to their work. On vWorker, all projects were performed on a work for hire basis in which an employer requested a certain task to be performed according to his or her specifications and received the copyright to the work produced.[22]

Modern freelancing marketplaces are frequently also said to be characterized by a reverse auction type bidding system[24] in which sellers compete to offer the lowest price that meets the specifications of a buyer's bid request, and prices decrease during the auction as sellers compete to offer lower bids than their competitors.

The bidding system on vWorker differed slightly from that general model. Because vWorker used closed or hidden bidding, a person who submitted a bid did not know the prices that other bidders quoted and could not modify his or her own bid accordingly, so there was no necessary decrease in bid amounts during the auction. It also turned out that the lowest bid on vWorker was chosen only by 20% of the employers[8] and that most buyers tended to choose the bid that was submitted last.[24]

Recognition

vWorker was a four time winner of the INC. 5000 award for fastest growing private companies in the United States in 2007–2010.[9]

Criticisms

In 2004, workers in Livingston County, New York accidentally released private information about low-income and foster care families on the vWorker website while posting a project.[25] vWorker was also sometimes used by students to "outsource" their homework problems.[26]

While it may be difficult to completely rule out user errors and lack of integrity on public freelance marketplaces, vWorker's solution was to strengthen its copyright and intellectual property complaint system so that it can be used by site users and members of the public for removing sensitive materials.[27] Professors could use the same system to remove projects for homework because the professor who created the homework owns the copyright to it.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "vworker.com Site Info". Alexa Internet, Inc. Retrieved September 27, 2011.
  2. ↑ "vworker.com". Retrieved November 17, 2012.
  3. ↑ "Vworker.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-04-01.
  4. ↑ "Freelancer.com Buys Another IT Job Site, vWorker (aka RentACoder.com), For A Price In The Millions". Retrieved 2012-11-19.
  5. 1 2 Vivek Kumar (May 5, 2011). "Entrepreneur and small business ideas: Interview with Ian Ippolito: Founder of vWorker.com". Entrepreneurs Website.
  6. ↑ Kirsner, Scott (January 1, 2006). "The eBay of Programmers". Fast Company.
  7. 1 2 3 Shazada, Usman (May 2011). "An interview with Ian Ippolito, CEO and Founder of vWorker".
  8. 1 2 3 Carey Giudici (February 9, 2009). "An Exclusive Interview with Ian Ippolito, Founder and CEO of vWorker.com". Whichlance.
  9. 1 2 "Inc 5000 2010 award for 'Fastest growing private companies'". 2010. Retrieved September 27, 2011.
  10. 1 2 Larry Phillips (December 19, 2005). "Contingent workforce". InformIT. Retrieved September 27, 2011.
  11. 1 2 "Internet Marketplaces for Freelancers – The Future of Work?". The Manager. Retrieved September 27, 2011.
  12. 1 2 3 Ohngren, Kara; Wang, Jennifer (June 2010). "100 Most Brilliant Ideas On our Radar". Entrepreneur.
  13. ↑ Raymund Flandez (October 13, 2008). "Help Wanted – And Found". The Wall Street Journal.
  14. ↑ Kenton, Christopher (April 11, 2003). "The Woman Behind the Code". Business Week.
  15. ↑ Amod Puranik (August 19, 2005). "Online Freelance Marketplaces". Entrepreneur.
  16. ↑ Shappir Bhimani (June 22, 2010). "RentACoder to vWorker – A vWorker Review". IMTips.
  17. ↑ "vWorker About Us". vWorker. Retrieved November 20, 2012.
  18. ↑ Morris, Ron (July 13, 2010). "A Conversation With Ian Ippolito of VWorker". American Entrepreneur Radio.
  19. ↑ Clint Witchalls (November 16, 2005). "Websites: The $60 question". The Independent.
  20. ↑ "Interview: The vWorker lifestyle". FOX News. February 10, 2011. Retrieved September 27, 2011.
  21. ↑ "Interview of vWorker CEO Ian Ippolito". CBS News. January 20, 2011. Retrieved September 27, 2011.
  22. 1 2 3 Charles M. Kozierok (March 2011). "vWorker (Formerly Rent A Coder) – Freelance Marketplace Site Analysis and Review". Freelancing Guide.
  23. ↑ Raymund Flandez (November 3, 2007). "RentACoder Review". Freelance University.
  24. 1 2 Wu, Yu; Ung, Hang; Aperjis, Christina (June 2011). "The Sunk Cost Fallacy in Reverse Auctions" (PDF). Workshop on the Economics of Networks, Systems and Computation (NetEcon '11) San Jose.
  25. ↑ Sullivan, Bob (February 8, 2004). "Government Agency Exposes Day-Care Data". MSNBC.
  26. ↑ Gomes, Lee (January 18, 2006). "Some Students Use Net To Hire Experts to Do Their School Work". Wall Street Journal.
  27. ↑ "Copyright or Trademark Infringement/Patent Violation Polices and Procedures". vWorker. Retrieved September 27, 2011.


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