press

This interesting article on deskmag discusses the German government’s plan to force freelancers to pay a compulsory retirement ‘contribution’. Will it kill off entrepreneurship and destroy millions of independent careers? At least that’s the opinion of Tim Wessels, an IT specialist from Hamburg who has launched a petition against the so-called “Rewarding Life’s Work” law. With this law, provided it is passed, Freelancers will be forced to pay €350+ a month to support the broken pension system, on top of the €300-€600 they must already pay for health insurance (plus other taxes). Demanding that entrepreneurs fork out at least €650 a month in contributions before they earn a single cent will end innovation in Germany…

Facebook today announced Timeline, a total redesign of the current profile page. Timeline chronicles your Facebook history and enables you to look at everything that has ever happened in your Facebook lifespan. Here’s a Mashable post that offers some great snapshots of Facebook’s new appearance and discusses some of the novelties. What do you think?

Picture courtesy of Mashable

Some of the new features include:

• “Timeline” – a stream of information about you (the photos you’ve posted, all your status updates, the apps you’ve used, even the places you’ve visited) that scrolls all the way back to your birth.
• You don’t have to just like something – “Facebook Gestures” enables users to express various kinds of reactions or emotions.
• Facebook apps will only ask for permission once to post content on your behalf – before apps had to ask each time before sharing information about you.
• Lightweight or trivial information is going to the “Ticker” – only the more relevant things such as status updates, photos from a wedding or a vacation, or changes in relationship status will appear in your news feed.
• And lastly, you can watch TV and movies, listen to music, and read news with your friends — all within Facebook.

Hamburg, February 25, 2011. projektwerk, the easiest project marketplace on the web for freelancers and companies, turns 12 – and celebrates this event with presents for its users instead of a big birthday bash.
Everybody who books a premium membership on projektwerk.com between February 24 and March 3, 2011, receives a festive 12% discount. And because a birthday with two presents is twice as nice as a birthday with just one present, projektwerk ups the ante: For every annual membership subscription in this period the thirteenth month is free.

The twelfth year of existence was a year of major steps. Not only has the project marketplace projektwerk successfully launched the specialised platforms it, creative, consulting, engineering and fashion and thus made customized industry solutions accessible to its users. It has also developed an innovative matching technology that facilitates a fast and efficient recruiting of projects and freelancers.

To benefit from the birthday discount, please use the promotional code bday12pw.

It was about time: Many of our users have been waiting for a feature to limit their matching results to a city or region.

Yesterday we finally released the location based matching, so that from now on you will be able to view only those matching results that are in a certain radius from your desired location.

It is as easy as this:

Simply add the location where you would preferably work to your expert profile – respectively add the city or region where your project is located.

Right above your matching results you will find not only the time slider – but also the new slider to regulate the distance to the location stated in your profile/project. Simply set this slider to the desired distance: e.g. should your next project be located right in the city you are living in or can it be about 100 km around this place?

Furthermore, we changed the daily matching notification: It now includes the location of the project or profile. Also we implemented direct links to your matching profiles or projects listed in the mail.

Why not try the location based matching right away?!

We wish you lots of success with projektwerk.

In the course of the relaunch of projektwerk, your account is being transferred from www.projektwerk.de to it.projektwerk.com and adapted to our newly developed matching technology.

Login, membership and data

Your user name will be the email adress you entered in your account on www.projektwerk.de while the previous user name is being deleted. Your password stays the same. In case you forgot your password, click here to create a new password. Your selected membership option, basic or premium, stays the same, too. In your ‘settings’ you will find your account data. Please check here, too, if it is up-to-date and complete.

Change of industry platform

As a first step, we transfer all accounts to it.projektwerk.com, including all data, invoices, pictures, attachments as well as projects and profiles. In case you wish to set up your account on another industry platform, creative, consulting, engineering or fashion, we have made a relocation service available to you on it.projektwerk.com. Your account will be transferred to your requested platform and deleted on it.projektwerk.com.
If you desire to use several industry platforms, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Projects and profiles

You will be able to see your existing projects and profiles migrated from www.projektwerk.de on your personalized homepage. Please check them and edit, if necessary. All keywords were generated automatically, so please check and modify them concerning your skills. By clicking the ‘edit’-button you can edit all parts of your project or profile and also add documents and a picture.

Notification about new projects and profiles

The daily notifications about projects and profiles have been optimized. You will now receive individual notifications about new matches that fit your projects and profiles. You can activate or deactivate this feature when editing your projects and profiles with the button ‘Daily notifications about new matches via email’.

Messages and applications

From now on there are no messages and application functions any more. projektwerk does not offer an internal mail system, so communication will take place directly through the channels you have chosen. You can contact other members directly via the prompted contact information. You can use the checkboxes in your ‘settings’ -> ‘contact information’ to choose which contact information shall be visible for other members. Interested freelancers will thus be able to get in contact with you directly.

Messages do not exist any more. Former applications with profile were represented by an ‘bookmark’ to the corresponding project. Former applications without profiles were transferred to a new profile with a ‘bookmark’ to the corresponding project.

Learn everything you need to know about the new functionality of projektwerk when taking our Tour.

More information about the projektwerk relaunch you will find on our Blog or in our FAQ.

After you have recently learned a lot about the new functionality of projektwerk, today we would like to discuss its centerpiece: the projektwerk matching service.

projektwerk’s innovative matching technology combines premium quality and simplicity and provides a new service that accurately assembles your perfect team.

projektwerk matching – what does this mean?

The matching technology compiles and synchronizes all consisting data of projects and profiles and then proposes to the user the most fitting business project partners. In this way, a freelance web designer and a business that is looking to redesign their web presence may, for example, quickly and efficiently be brought together by our powerful service.

Why matching instead of regular search queries?

This change was implemented to help alleviate the often very long-winded and nerve-racking search request. Matching simplifies and accelerates the entire search process making it a lot easier to find your ideal project partner. It is no longer necessary to skim endless lists of search results because the matching technology synchronizes your data with that of the other users, thereby calculating the best possible matches.

Once you have entered your project requirements or your personal expertise, you will be kept up to date on newly added profiles and projects that match without having to resubmit any information or data. The repeated entry of search terms for example is no longer necessary.

How do I use the matching service?

First, create a project or profile within your account. Make sure to pay attention to the clarity and conciseness of your data as the matching technology uses this information to calculate the best possible match. Parameters such as the title, the project or profile description as well as the keywords are very important because they are used to determine the most appropriate partners (also see part 3: Create a project or profile).  Lastly, the software suggests optimal matches, and it is for you to decide which project partner you want to contact.

projektwerk’s matching service and the very simple handling will save you a lot of time. The new service also provides very high matching accuracy and makes it possible for you to find the perfect match in no time – without having to look far!

If you should have any further questions, don’t hesitate to contact us or sign up for one of our webinars (in german).

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Read more about the upcoming relaunch:

Introduction Relaunch

Part 1: General Information

Part 2: The Homepage

Part 3: Create a Project or Profile

We basically informed you about the main features and characteristics of the new homepage yesterday. Today, we would like to explain how to create a project or profile in order to optimally utilize the matching service.

Because projects and profiles merely differ in the kind of content they contain, we will describe how to set up a profile as an example.

1. Select: Profile or project
After logging in, you will be directed to your personal page. Choose “Create profile to offer your skills and find a project”.

2. Significant title
Give your profile a meaningful title, because this is one of the parameters used to calculate the matching results. Note: A significant title helps to attract attention and gives a first impression of your profile.

3. Keywords
List your skills as keywords first. You can name up to seven keywords including the level of your expertise ranging from basic to expert knowledge.

Like the title, the keywords are of special importance as they flow into the matching calculations. Therefore they should be chosen wisely.

4. Description
Describe your skills and work experience to give interested providers of projects an exact idea of your skills. The description will also be factored into the calculation of the matching results.

5. Location
Next you will be asked to name the location you would prefer to work at.

6. Period of publication
Appoint the period of publication to publish the profile for a defined period of time. If you do not choose an individual period of time, the profile will be published directly after saving it

In case you save the profile „as a draft“, it will be marked as „inactive“. Your profile will then only be visible to you. Nevertheless, suitable matches for your draft will be displayed. This way, you can get informed about potential project partners without your profile appearing on other users´ matching results.

7. Define visibility
Also, you can define the visibility of your profile. You can decide, whether your profile will be viewable only by other projektwerk members or if you wish to extend your visibility to the projektwerk home page and search engines.

8. Image and file upload
After saving the profile, you can upload a picture or other attachments – e.g. your CV.

Once you have submitted this information, suitable projects will instantly be advertised to you. As you login, newly added and updated matches are displayed.

Tomorrow, we would like to explain how the matching technology actually works.

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Read more about the upcoming relaunch:

Introduction Relaunch

Part 1: General Information

Part 2: The Homepage

Part 4: The Matching

Today’s part of our series will explain what you find on the simplified and redesigned projektwerk industry homepages.

Homepage projektwerk IT

1. Dropdown menu

The industry dropdown menu gives you an overview of all available industries on projektwerk.

A single click will take you to the desired homepage: projektwerk IT, consulting, creative, engineering or fashion.

2. The “try me”

The “try me” button allows you to briefly test the new matching service. You simply choose whether you ARE a Freelancer or you NEED a freelancer and type in up to three keywords. Based on your entered data, our matching technology will generate your best fitting project partners. You will directly see the total of your matches.

Once you create a free basic account these matches will be displayed in an overview.

3. The latest projects and profiles

On our newly designed homepage you will also find an overview of the five most recent projects and profiles that have been published.

To stay informed about all new projects and profiles simply subscribe to the RSS Feed.

4. projektwerk in three steps

Under the header “This is what projektwerk has in store for you” you will get to know all about projektwerk and our value proposition. To get details about the functionality, view “This is how projektwerk works”. You’ll find all about memberships and prices under “These are your options as projektwerk member”.

Next we’ll show you how to create your project or profile to get your best possible matches.

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Read more about the upcoming relaunch:

Introduction Relaunch

Part 1: General Information

Part 3: Create a Project or Profile

Part 4: The Matching

Welcome to the first part of our four-part series on all the novelties on projektwerk you will run into as from September 2010.

Our focus was the development of a matching technology that would replace the long lists of search results and connect you with appropriate project partners even faster and more efficiently. Therefore, the new service is dedicated to the motto “Stop searching-just match!”. In addition to the new matching service, a new design provides for fun and ease of use.

Today we want to give you an insight into the fundamental changes that have taken place:

Industry extensions:

More and more industries rely on concepts that embrace project-related work in one form or another. projektwerk is experiencing a trend in which the number of projects and profiles that are not related to the IT sector is constantly increasing.
To meet this demand and create an environment that allows you to gain contacts pertaining to your specific industry and field of expertise, we recently launched new industry solutions for IT, consulting, creative, engineering and fashion.

You can find an overview of the various industries on www.projektwerk.com or via the drop-down menu of the individual industry pages.

If you wish to have access to projects and freelancers from different sectors, you can register on the relevant industry platforms with additional accounts.

Language selection

To meet the standard of an international freelance market, content on projektwerk will be available in both German and in English. The default language is dependent on your browser settings and can be adjusted manually.
Please visit our English corporate blog for interesting information and news on the various sectors at www.projektwerk.com/en/blog.

Membership

Basic and premium membership models remain unchanged, so that all existing memberships retain their validity.
The prices will also stay the same, however, we have extended the scope of functions available to you:
With a free basic account, you can either submit a project or a profile, view your matching results, and be contacted by freelancers and project providers.
The paid premium membership enables you to post an unlimited number of projects and profiles, use the matching service en detail, as well as proactively and directly contact other users.

Now it’s up to you:
Find out about your industry platform and set up your browser to utilize the desired language.
Tomorrow we will provide you with information about our simplified home page and its new content.

We would be happy to assist you with any questions or suggestions you may have!

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Read more about the upcoming relaunch:

Introduction Relaunch

Part 2: The Homepage

Part 3: Create a Project or Profile

Part 4: The Matching

Are you tired of skimming long lists of search results? Same here!

Fortunately projektwerk’s newly developed matching technology solves this inconvenience. Under the motto “stop searching – just match” our new service will be available to you in September 2010 and surely bring back the joy of finding suitable project partners: Once you have entered your profile or project, the service will automatically show appropriate matches in your overview.

What will change?

What does this mean in detail?

By using a descriptive title, proper keywords and a short concise description, the projektwerk matching technology is able to reliably calculate suitable project partners for you. By storing your entries, retyping search queries is no longer necessary, and you remain informed about new matches in realtime.

As project-related work is increasingly taking place across borders, projektwerk too has expanded its scope: Our service now makes it even easier to find and connect matching project partners – worldwide. Apart from IT, various other industries increasingly place emphasis on project-related work concepts. projektwerk’s industry solutions for IT, consulting, creative, engineering and fashion, enable you to gain valuable contacts in your field of expertise.

Find out all about the new features available on projektwerk later this week on the blog. Become acquainted with the improvements and visit our free webinars (in german). During the introductory phase we will be glad to assist you with any advice or support you may need.

Kind regards,

Your projektwerk-Team

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Read more about the upcoming relaunch:

Part 1: General Information

Part 2: The Homepage

Part 3: Create a Project or Profile

Part 4: The Matching