Facebook’s fizzled IPO and doubts about its advertising potential have put a damper on the job market for Facebook-related positions, a new study finds.
Facebook related jobs “fell dramatically” during the quarter measuredbetween April and June, dropping 14 per cent to a total of 6,510 jobs,according to research by Freelancer.com. Twitter related job postingsfell by just 1.3 per cent and social media jobs overall stalled bygrowing just 1.1 per cent during the three-month period, suggesting thesoftening is specific only to Facebook.
“Advertisers and social media experts started to question theeffectiveness and ROI of social mediaadvertising on the back ofdamning reports from customers during the Facebook public offering(and) on the back of reports that Fortune 500s including General Motorswere pulling their big ticket advertising budgets with thesocial mediagiant,” Freelancer.com stated in its study.
The report is based on analysis of 190,000 job openings posted duringthe quarter on Freelancer.com, which bills itself as the world’slargest outsourcing marketplace on the Web.
The research also found that Apple iOS jobs enjoyed aresurgence afterlagging behind Android job openings at the end of 2011, jumping by 30per cent in the quarterly period. Business process outsourcing (BPO)also shot up as companies look to save money by outsourcing work in thefollowing categories: virtual assistant, data processing, MS Word andMS Excel.
Australia-based Freelancer.com entered the Canadian marketplace lastweek by acquiring Toronto company Scriptlance for an undisclosed amountand transferring its customers to a new site at Freelancer.ca.