Upwork: Product Developments

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Summary of Product Deve

2024

• January 26, 2024: Upwork said boosted proposals will only be available to eligible freelancers. “To promote a quality match with the client, the boost table appears if you are a relevant match for the job. Eligible freelancers will see this option, while others can apply organically. The boost option will appear during the proposal submission process,” Upwork wrote.

2023

• December 11, 2023: Upwork lowers one of the requirements for calculating Job Success Score (JSS) to speed up the time it takes to match clients with the right talent and to improve score accuracy. "A Job Success Score now appears once freelancers complete 2 or more projects with 2 or more clients anytime within 24 months. (Previously: 4 or more projects with 2 or more clients within 24 months), " Upwork said in a community post. Upwork also said that more weight will be given to public feedback when calculating JSS.
• December 6, 2023: Upwork brings the Boosted Profiles feature to all work categories and job types.

• December 5, 2023: Upwork said fixed contract disputes can now be done within Upwork instead of contacting customer support via email.

• December 5, 2023: Upwork enters into a partnership with vendor management systems (VMS) and managed service providers (MSP), SAP Fieldglass and Flextrack, for its Enterprise Suite business. Other than centralizing and streamlining workforce management, onboarding, and payment into existing workflows and one system, the partnerships will also “mitigate risks of departmental hiring outside of existing procurement processes, provide comprehensive control over sourcing and hiring, and reduce extraneous approvals and hiring workstreams,” Upwork said. Upwork said it has also introduced managed services, a new enterprise dashboard and an AI job posts generator for Enterprise Suite Clients.

• November 6, 2023: Upwork partners with additional providers of generative AI tools such as Adobe, Amazon, ClickUp and Miro. It has also partnered with training resource providers such as Coursera, Jasper and Udemy to help talent improve the quality of their work. Upwork has also opened a waitlist for its Upwork Chat Pro, a new GPT-4-powered app currently in beta version that will help talent complete work faster and more effectively.

• November 2, 2023: Upwork launches a research institute to expand the company’s study of workforce dynamics and to provide business leaders with tools and insights that will guide their future workforce decisions.

• October 3, 2023: Upwork has introduced the Boosted Profiles feature in a beta version. The feature will increase visibility for freelancers. Freelancers who subscribe to Boosted Profiles feature will appear at the top of “the invite freelancers” page for clients who are hiring. Freelancers have an option to set the amount they will pay per click as well as the end date. A client cannot click a freelancer profile more than once per job post.

• September 29, 2023: Upwork introduces the purchase of AI apps such as Adobe, Miro, Tabnine, and Jasper in a freelancer account. The offers come with discounts, use cases and content on how to use them.

• September 12, 2023: Upwork introduces scheduled rate increase in hourly contracts. Scheduled rate increase feature enables clients and freelancers to adjust rates automatically. The feature include the percent increase as well as the duration for which the increase will take effect. The scheduled rate increase is applicable to new contracts and not existing ones and once set cannot be changed. Upwork said that the feature will be rolled out gradually.

• August 16, 2023: Starting August 16, the number of connects needed to bid for a job will range from 4 to 16. “This change will help us facilitate better matches, increase flexibility to price projects accurately, and attract more top tier clients to the platform,” Upwork said in a community notice. Initially, the number of connects could range from 2 to 6, but Upwork raised the range to 2 to 8 in March 2023.

• July 31, 2023: Upwork partners with OpenAI to provide businesses with expert-vetted talent who are versed with OpenAI technologies. The "OpenAI Experts on Upwork" hub, co-designed by OpenAI and Upwork, features Upwork talent who are equiped with more than 250 unique AI skills. OpenAI Experts is an extension of the recently launched AI Services hub. The two companies notes that the most used cases of OpenAI by customers include building models powered by large language models(LLMs), fine-tuning those models as well as building AI chatbots. As part of the partnership, Upwork and OpenAI also came up with a vetting process that will be used to identify freelancers to include in the program.

Moritz's assessment: Unfortunately, OpenAI did not announce the partnership (neither on their Website nor on Twitter) and does not seem to have integrated a link to Upwork in any other place. Additionally, the talent pool of pre-vetted talent is incredibly small. As of now, there are only 24 talents on Upwork’s dedicated OpenAi website. I am a bit unsure if we should treat the fact that they have a full press announcement about a product that is in such an early stage as a small negative indicator. (We need at least to be wary about other press announcements and have a close look how advanced those products are)

• July 11, 2023: Upwork launches new generative AI tools and services hub to make it easy for businesses to find AI talent and for freelancers to find AI opportunities. The company said that weekly job posts related to generative AI have grown by over 450% year-over-year. Starting today also, Upwork will offer talent an exclusive 30-day free trial of Jasper generative AI services "for copywriting, marketing, and image creation." Upwork is also launching AI beta features powered by OpenAI, which include Job Post Generator, Upwork Chat, Proposal Tips, and Additional Resources.

Aron's assessment: Upwork added generative AI to Data Science and Analytics job category. However, the impact on Data Science and Analytics jobs has not been seen yet.

• February 13,2023: Upwork expands to support full-time hiring. The new end-to-end solution enables businesses of all sizes to find, vet, hire, onboard and pay highly skilled professionals for full-time work arrangements, without the complexity commonly associated with global hiring. The end-to-end solution features: (1)Contract-to-hire working relationship-since the beginning of 2023, clients testing this feature have posted over 40,000 contract-to-hire jobs on the Upwork marketplace. (2)Expanded availability of Upwork’s world-class payroll, compliance and contract management tools – formerly reserved for Enterprise Suite clients – to help small and mid-size businesses classify and pay talent. (3)Enhanced Enterprise Suite capabilities for large businesses to classify, hire and pay full-time talent at scale -Upwork added that its research shows that 93 percent of hiring managers often or occasionally convert freelancers into full-time employees.

Aron's assessment: Full-time hiring product looks interesting as it will help the company dive into a new niche that hasn't been exploited by competitors. With its tools, it can pull it off. Hayden Brown acknowledged in Q1 2023 earnings call that the product is seeing positive adoption. However, she noted that it is too early to see its impacts. Our data points to positive uptake of contract-to-hire roles, a feature that enables talent and client to indicate in their profile that they are open to full-time roles.

2022

• August 10, 2022: Upwork launched flexible approval workflows aimed at helping enterprise clients to get better scope of project scope, spend and other operational features. For instance, it enables a manager to assign approvers to team contract's requests. It also gives an overview of all approval requests, etc.
• October 24, 2022: Launched contract-to-hire roles feature.
• April 24, 2022: Upwork launched new self-serve reports meant for enterprise suit clients. These reports provide data on talent performance, user activity such as talent spend and payroll billings.
• February 1, 2022: Upwork launched availability badge for talent. This feature helps client know which talent are available for work right away. Talent can turn on this feature using connect. According to Upwork, talent who turn on this feature are 76.3% more likely to take the work offer.
• March 22, 2022: Upwork launched boosted proposals, a feature that enables talent to appear in the top three spot of proposals received by a client. Upwork noted that boosting proposal can increase the chance of getting a job by as much as 55%. It added that talent boosting proposals are 66% more likely to be top rated. To boost proposals, freelancers need to use connects. Upwork said in Q2 2022 that the number of talent using boosted proposals was up significantly.
• April 7, 2022: Upwork launched paid consultations, which are paid one-time calls between clients and freelancers. Paid consultations are offered through project catalog. Only Rising Talent, Top Rated, Top Rated Plus, or Expert-Vetted can offer these paid consultations.A talent can create up to three consultations, which can be in any work category available.Upwork noted in Q3 2022 shareholder that Project Consultations available in 90+ categories can increase speed of starting working together by 50%. It added that 30-day spend by clients who used consultations was nearly three times spend by customers who only purchase through Project Catalog.
• May, 2022: Made improvements to Upwork messages. For instance, they availed built-in search functionality.
• Updated the Upwork Payroll transaction history to give clients things such as talent pay rates, reimbursements issues, taxes paid and payroll fees paid, in one place.
• Fostered the Upwork community.

2021

• January, 2021: Upwork introduced Project Catalog, which is simply ready-made projects built by talent A client can compare project catalogs side by side and even customize them using ad-ons such as additional rounds of revision. The catalogs also carry ratings and reviews from clients. In Q1 2022, Upwork said in the shareholder letter that Project Catalog was converting visitors to light wait customers and improving their retention. ". For example, 47% of clients who bought a Project Catalog project in 2021 made a repeat purchase later in the year. Of those repeat purchases, 72% were made on the Talent Marketplace and 50% were another Project Catalog project, suggesting up to 22% made repeat purchases on both. More than half of clients who hire again are working with the same talent."
• December, 2021: Starts testing paid consultations.
• August, 2021: Started testing boosted proposals.
• July, 2021: Started testing availabilty badge.
• Upwork introduced innovations to build and manage hybrid team such as faster freelancer verification process, more payment options, more features on Bring Your Own Talent, seamless ayroll, etc.
• Upwork added features to improve collaboration between talent and clients such as Virtual Talent Bench, record with Loom, share larger files feauture, etc.
• Upwork introduced new applications such as biometric authentication feature, advanced search, personalized talent recommendations, etc.
• Made connections in Upwork community stronger by improving private messages and community search. It also launched community blog.

2020

• April 23, 2020: Upwork launched Direct Contracts, a functionality that enables Upwork talent to enter into contracts with non-Upwork clients. Direct contracts offer safety and security features. Freelancers using Direct contracts will pay a 3.4% payment processing fee.
• October 27, 2020: Launched Project Catalog in beta version. It was launched a month earlier than planned, across 300 merketplace categories.
• May 11, 2020: Upwork enhanced Bring Your Own Talent(BYOT), a feature available to Enterprise clients. BYOT enables enterprise clients to bring non-upwork contingent workers into the platfom and leverage tools such as payrolls, cost management and collaboration tools. In Q4 2020 Upwork said in the prepared remarks, " We landed a global tech firm that onboarded over a thousand freelancers, running over $1 million through this BYOT product all within Q4."
• November 10, 2020: Upwork partnered with Zoom to integrate Zoom's video and communication tool to Upwork platform.

2019

• March 19, 2019: Upwork launched Upwork Plus, its first packaged service offering tailored for small businesses. It features on-demand support, greater visibility for job posts, and dedicated darshboard for collaborations.
• March 2019: Upwork launched Upwork Business for mid-market businesses.
• Launched Upwork freelancer and client apps.
• Launched Bring-Your-Own Agency feature to Upwork Enterprise customers.

Is the platform experiencing any bugs?

The number of bugs experienced on the platform in 2023 are only 67. Out of this, 60 have been resolved.

	Workaround issues	Resolved Issues
Number	7	60

Common bug issues experienced by users

• October 3,2023: Aron encountered an error while trying to view certificate of earnings.

• August 2, 2023: At around 9:24 am CEST, Moritz experienced an issue with messaging feature. It could not load.
• July, 2023: Aron experienced an issue with advanced search feature. The talent search feature was not working.
• Account is suspended error.
• Issues with accessing profile.
• Issues with submiting proposals and purchasing connects.
• Issues with client recent history.
• Badges not showing.
• Issue with W-8BEN notification.
• Connection issues in messages.
• Issue with manual work diaries.
• Freelancers experienced Issues with jobs feed(best matches and recent jobs).
• Unable to accept an offer error.