oDesk is dead, long live Upwork

May 5, 2015 at the height of the working day in Europe and without a declaration of war, the world's largest freelance bourse oDesk ceased to exist. Instead of the familiar interface, freelancers and customers who decided to look at odesk.com were transferred to the website in green color design located at upwork.com. According to the message posted on the main page of the resource, oDesk is now Upwork .

The current changes - in fact, the first major change on the stock exchange since the merger of oDesk and Elance , which occurred more than a year ago. CEO Elance-oDesk Stefan Kasriel in the corporate blog called the new design "friendly to users of mobile devices" and "simplified." Together with the restart of oDesk in the guise of Upwork, it was announced the release of the application for Android and iOS , which was the messenger.
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In addition, Casriel named four areas for innovation in which the company will focus in the coming months:

Accelerated hiring . It will be easier for freelancers to indicate whether they are available for work, and for customers to find, interview and select performers who can start work immediately.

Improved interaction . According to the PR service, the work will be easier and more productive. The new messaging system will include chat and video. Conversations can be conducted within rooms, communicating with team members using Android and iOS devices .

Larger teams . It will be possible the interaction of a large number of freelancers and customers. Customers will be able to organize large freelance teams quickly and safely.

Professional growth . Upwork promises to be a platform conducive to the development of independent professionals. It is reported that the best of the best will be able to receive more good orders.

The new Upwork mobile app should help in solving these tasks.

Freelancers ambiguously perceived the changes on oDesk , for which they were not ready. In the comments to the blog of Stefan Kasriel visible, mostly negative reviews. At the time of publication of the material, the Upwork site is unstable, and the application refuses to allow users to go beyond the form to enter the name and password, reporting errors.