Today Freelancer.co.uk released the Freelancer Fast 50 report for Q4 2012, tracking trends in the online jobs market.

“The Freelancer Fast 50 report is a fairly unique leading indicator of the online economy”, said Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.co.uk. “As the largest outsourcing marketplace in the world with almost 7 million users and over 4 million jobs posted to date, the Freelancer Fast 50 report is uniquely placed to provide insights into ups and downs in the demand for skills, technologies, products and performance of companies through analysis of over one hundred thousand jobs per quarter being posted online”, he continued.

Top trends from Q4 2012:

●      Website Hosting jobs skyrocketed over 3300% (to 4,059 jobs) as more and more businesses move into the cloud, with most of these jobs involving moving established sites to the cloud, or sending new cloud-hosted sites live.

The standout performer was Amazon Web Services, which saw an increase of an incredible 466% this quarter (to 1,895 jobs) as the online retail juggernaut continues to dominate with it’s EC2 platform, expanding rapidly into new regions and deploying faster, new generation servers with improved storage capabilities.

●      Microsoft desktop apps take off after the release of Windows 8: Demand for Windows Desktop apps shot up 305% this quarter as Microsoft unveiled its new operating system (to 1,923 jobs), although volumes are still low compared to other architectures. MS Word and Powerpoint saw growth spurts of 211% (to 4578 jobs) and 309% (to 1,253 jobs) respectively.

●      Are we seeing Apple AppFatigue? With a crowded marketplace of over 1 million apps now in the Apple App Store, developers for Apple mobile platforms are showing signs of app-fatigue. In Q4 Apple iOS jobs dropped for the first time since the Fast 50 report started being published; iPhone jobs dropped 3.8% (to 5,298 jobs) and those for the iPad fell 14% (to 2,036 jobs). This was reflected in Apple’s share price, which plummeted 20% over the quarter. Android on the other hand gained 7% (to 4,282 jobs) as shipments for the open platform well overtake those of Apple. “This is a huge platform change,” Google’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, says of Android’s widening lead over iOS. “This is of the scale of 20 years ago — Microsoft versus Apple. We’re winning that pretty clearly now.”

●      Software and Website QA jobs soar as eCommerce sites rushed to fortify themselves for holiday season traffic: Q4 saw a spike in Software and Website Testing jobs as online retail rushed to get their sites ready and bug free for the peak selling season. Software Testing jumped 2500% (to 5,200 jobs) while Website Testing saw an equally astounding 2055% increase (to 3,923 jobs).

●      eBay jobs rise as the online marketplace reinvents itself. After 17 years in the online auction business the company rolled out a number of dramatic changes to its website and mobile application, including new branding. These changes, in combination with a pivot to a mobile-centric and small-business friendly focus, resulted in eBay jobs gaining 22% (to 1,790 jobs) for the quarter as it diversifies its auction house into an eCommerce marketplace and goes head-to-head with tech retail giant Amazon.

●      Social media and Internet Marketing jobs continue to fall out of favour in the wake of constant platform and search index changes: Despite the boom in Internet traffic, continual changes and negative reports have left advertisers confused whether using social networks as an advertising platform will pay off in the end. According to the New York times, only 14% of digital advertising budgets are currently allocated to social networking. That doubt was reflected in the online jobs market, where Social Networking projects declined 5.1% (to 5,820 jobs). Both Facebook (down 8.4% to 7,186 jobs) and Twitter (down 6.4% to 2,240 jobs) also felt the pinch. Internet Marketing in general was flat (down 1.4% to 15,244 jobs), while SEO is still reeling from the after effects of Google’s Panda changes (down 3.3% to 10,159 jobs). Some marketers fell back to Email Marketing (up 186% to 1,003 jobs).

Freelancer Fast 50 for Q4 2012

This data was extracted from 261,003 jobs posted on Freelancer.co.uk in Q3 2012, up from 230,614 in Q2. The Freelancer.co.uk Fast 50 is the leading gauge of online hiring trends.