As anyone who has been watching the oConomy Facts tab on our homepage will know, the oConomy has been growing rapidly.  It wasn’t until yesterday, though, that we learned just how fast our revenue growth has been when compared to other young companies.  We’ve been named a Rising Star on Deloitte’s 2007 Technology Fast 500.   A special category, the Rising Star list ranks the 20 companies that have been in business a minimum of three years, but less than five years, that showed the highest percentage of revenue growth over the past three years (2004 to 2006).  Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 is a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications and life sciences companies in North America.

We love winning awards.  We’re gunning to win a spot on the Fast 500 list once we’ve been around long enough to be eligible, so please keep the feedback coming and let us know what we can do to better serve you.  Thank you!

Dmitry Sokolovksy, our QA master, is also a bayan guru, which is a type of accordion.

He recently brought his accordion to the office and played a bunch of his favorite songs. Some really impressive finger work, I’m sure it helps in typing fast on the computer

Check out this video:

I hope you noticed:

The scary cat pictures
My South Asian bobble-head
The wink

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Abid Mohsin

Our friends at Predictify launched their service earlier today and we’re giving it a whirl.  Predictify is sponsoring an oDesk-related poll to help predict how large the oConomy will be in Q4.

Those of you that frequent the oDesk homepage have probably noticed that the oConomy is growing faster than ever - nearly $3.5 million in the last 90 days!  You can see total provider earnings for the last 90 days on the “oConomy Facts” tab of our homepage.

Make your prediction for total provider earnings for the period from October 1st through the end of the year.

The most accurate predictors will split a pot of $250.

This morning we announced the launch of a Facebook developer skills test.  The test is the first and only skills test designed to help businesses hire the most talented Facebook application developers.  See the full release here.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen a rapid increase in Facebook development job opportunities.  The test provides a great new tool to oDesk buyers who want another data point to evaluate a developer’s Facebook-book development skills.  As is the case with all of oDesk’s 103 skills tests, you can easily search the oDesk provider database to find providers that have passed the test.

If you are a provider with Facebook development skills, you can take the test for free.  Upon test completion, you can choose whether or not to display your score on your profile.

And while we’re talking about Facebook development skills, it’s also worth mentioning that our friend, Dave McClure, has announced an interesting new conference that will be of interest to Facebook developers and those that love them.  Graphing Social Patterns is a conference for developers and marketers on how to build and distribute apps for the Facebook Platform. 

As a winner of the Red Herring Top 100 award, we were invited to interview with Red Herring TV and discuss how we are making it possible for SMBs to access talent around the world. Here’s the clip of Gary’s interview with Sean Wolfe in Red Herring’s snazzy new studio.

Go to Red Herring TV’s website.

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Abid Mohsin

Tim Ferriss, an enterprising entrepreneur that claims to work only four hours per week, recently published a book about how he does it.

It’s an interesting read. We’re not entirely convinced he only works four hours per week but he offers some sound advice on streamlining operations, being more productive, and enjoying the life you have now instead of waiting until retirement. One of the keys to success that Tim recommends is outsourcing anything that can be done for less than half of what it would cost you to do it yourself (or that you don’t know how to do yourself). He includes everything from typical business activities like customer service, web development and administrative tasks, to checking email, cooking and even online dating.

Tim is new to oDesk but we introduced ourselves to him last week, and he’s going to test us out. He included oDesk in a recent blog post about “Extreme Personal Outsourcing� and we hope to hear more from him in the future. In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about how you might be able to save some time at work or outsource your love life, check out .

Hello oDeskers,

Do you have a great story to tell about how you’re using oDesk? Are you able to travel more, have greater flexibility with your work day, or free up more time because of your remote work environment?

In honor of “The Four Hour Work Weekâ€? by Tim Ferriss, we’re looking for some great stories from oDesk users that are able to do and experience new things because they’re either working remotely or hiring remote assistance to help them grow their businesses. We know you’re out there! If you have a great story to tell, please share it with us. We’re gathering stories to share with the media - tv, print and radio. This could be an opportunity to talk to the media about your remote work situation and promote yourself and your business. So let us know! Send us an email at odesksuccess@gmail.com