Today Airtasker is turning 1 and although it sounds like a cheesy cliche, in this case it’s more than fair to say “it’s all thanks to you” – the folk who have discovered,  established and shaped the Airtasker community.  Now here’s a big (non-scary) hug from us!

When we launched the Airtasker platform in early 2012, it was a pretty quiet place.  We started with around 50 available Airtaskers and the email addresses of our mates and since then, we’ve seen more and more people getting smart about how they share their time, skills and money to get their tasks completed.  Our little collaborative village is now populated with over 43,000 people who have outsourced more than $600,000 worth of tasks to awesome, helpful people.  We’ve seen smart people use Airtasker to get tasks done like we never thought possible and on the flip side, our community of Airtaskers has truly embraced the concept of micro-entrepreneurialism to earn good money and take control of their working lives.

We’ll never forget some of the epic tasks that were completed, like the guy who asked someone to pretend to be his girlfriend and to make him a sandwich, the folk who got someone to dress up in a bear suit and walk around the city or the company that used Airtasker to get the first iPhone 5 in the world (yes, the world!).

But amongst all of the quirky tasks we’ve seen posted, we’re really stoked to see real-world tasks being completed everyday – from (lots of) IKEA furniture assembly, housework, deliveries and computer help to smart businesses using Airtaskers to find awesome promotional staff, complete mystery shops or conduct field research.  Cheers to our super reliable team of Airtaskers (who managed a record response time of as little as 6.3 seconds!) – you guys rock, hard…

So from here, we can’t wait to see what happens in the next year of Airtasker collaborative consumption history.  Now, back to work!

Cheers from Tim, Jono, Farina, Leonard, Chris, Ed and all of the Airtasker Team

A trip down memory lane…(Airtasker January 2012)

Today we’re pleased to announce that we’ve just acquired TaskBox, another Sydney-based startup that connects individuals and businesses seeking to outsource everyday tasks to reliable and trusted people who can complete those tasks. The founders of TaskBox James Mather and Nick Roberts are going to join Airtasker as Team Advisors and will be responsible for driving business development as we continue to expand our peer-based outsourcing smartphone apps and website.

The acquisition will help us to grow the size of our marketplace and as a team, we’re super excited to welcome aboard  Nick and James who bring great experience that will be relevant as we continue to grow our P2P platform whilst also expanding in to the business services market.

James Mather, CEO and co-founder of TaskBox says:

“While the TaskBox community was gaining traction in Sydney’s northern and eastern suburbs, we knew we had to grow the market quickly in order to make TaskBox a useful tool.  Airtasker had a great team of founders, engineers and advisors, and it became apparent to us that the best way to see our vision come to life was to join forces with the Airtasker team.”

Tim Fung, CEO and co-founder of Airtasker says:

“The acquisition of TaskBox is a great step forward for us, bolstering our workforce to well over 40,000 users which is proving to be really timely as we’re seeing double-digit monthly growth in tasks completed through our platform.  We can’t wait to get to work with Nick and James to carry forward their plans in collaborative consumption through Airtasker.”

The Airtasker Jobs Board Plugin is a widget that allows you to serve a live feed of available tasks to your website users.  It’s a great way to share our “sticky” task content with your website community.

The plugin is a small, simple JavaScript widget that can be easily placed onto any website using only 2 lines of code. Our goal with this project has been to let any website owner, of any level of technical proficiency to use this widget to add some great new content to their site and serve their community.  To set it up, all you need to do is add 2 lines of code to the page where you want the widget to appear:

Line 1:

You’ll need to add the target <div> that the job board content will go inside of. Simply place the following line in your HTML where you want the content to appear:

<div id=”target”></div>

Line 2:

After this you’ll need to add the JavaScript that powers the plugin. Place the following either in the head of the page, or immediately before the body:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”https://www.airtasker.com/assets/a_widget.js?v=1“></script>

After this the content should appear straight away on your site!

Troubleshooting:

There are a few technical concerns to think about:

1. The Jobs Board Plugin requires at least 600px of width.  We’re working on relaxing this requirement but it is difficult to fit this data into a smaller space.
2. Airtasker serves all content via HTTPS. For security reasons, it’s unlikely we’ll relax this rule any time soon.
3. Airtasker heavily caches all static content. Our testing has indicated that this sometimes means you won’t get the most up-to-date version of the script.
4. If you feel you are getting a buggy version that you’re sure we’ve fixed simply change the “v=1″ part of the script code to another number, e.g.: “v=2″. This is a common “cache-busting” technique.

If you’ve got any technical questions, you can chat directly with our lead developer Leonard “Di Caprio” Garvey here: leonard@airtasker.com

We love when two good things work even better together! So when the crew from AirBnB rolled in to town last week, it was great to see the world’s largest collaborative marketplace call us here at Airtasker Business to help them get their massive launch party on Cockatoo Island into shape for a special event, which included the founders of AirBnB – Brian Chesky and Nathan Blecharczyk as well as special guests Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis.

Most people know that event management is one of the most stressful jobs in the world so everything needs to happen on time and without a fuss! Check out some of the pics of Airtaskers helping AirBnB make sure their Sydney Office Launch event a huge success and a ton of fun:

WELCOME TO COCKATOO ISLAND:

AWESOME PARTY DECORATIONS:

THE ALL IMPORTANT GUEST LIST:

THE OFFICE BEHIND THE PARTY:

BUMP IN & BUMP OUT:

MAKING THE EVENT HAPPEN:
What’s best about having a workforce of awesome people is that whatever needs to be done, gets done without a fuss.

Thanks to Chris, Christian and Ayni at AirBnB – we had a ball helping to make your event happen!

You can find out more about Airtasker Business here.

Today we’re super happy to announce the launch of Airtasker Business – a dedicated business service aimed at helping organisations outsource almost any task that they need done within their business.

So why did we set up Airtasker Business? We started noticing that more and more jobs being posted on Airtasker were coming from businesses – some big, some small and to make our service even more convenient for businesses completing tasks with anywhere from 1 to 1,000 runners, we decided to kick up a notch and create a dedicated Account Management Pod to coordinate teams of Airtasker Runners for projects like mystery shopping (store checks), promotional work (like flyer handouts) and office admin as well as marketing projects (like research and product testing).

Companies can now use Airtasker Business to scale their workforce up or down as needed, and they can now have even more confidence through our business-ready account management team that ensures tasks are completed correctly and on time. With the number of feedback reviews growing everyday and so many runners completing a thorough application process before being video screened and ID-checked, we’re excited about being able to provide a really high quality service to businesses.

We think that Airtasker Business will represent simple and cost-efficient way of tapping into a large workforce to complete short-term jobs like flyer handouts, event promotions, and mystery shopping (store checks).

Also, as most Airtasker Runners have a smartphone or tablet, we’re excited about the potential to leverage features like cameras and GPS location check-ins (Foursquare integration perhaps??) to make it easier to outsource and manage teams completing off-site jobs such as mystery shopping, data collection and store checks. For example, retailers can now have an army of runners go into multiple store locations, complete a short survey through a smartphone app and take photos of product positioning with their smartphone camera so they can see what’s going on in their retail channels at a really low cost.

Could you use Airtasker Runners to make your business scale quickly and be even more efficient? Would love to hear your feedback in the comments below.

Onwards and upwards! Tim

Every year thousands of men all over the world take part in the challenge to grow moustaches to raise money for a good cause. But what about those of us who are follicly challenged in the facial area?

This year, hire an Airtasker to grow a moustache for you (and all task fees wil be donated by Airtasker to support the Movember Foundation for men’s health).

Here’s how it works:
1. Post a Movember Task for an Airtasker Runner to grow a moustache on your behalf and for him to register on the official Movember Foundation website*.

2. During the month of November you can track your runners Mo progress through the Movember website and support him raising money for the good cause.

3. Once the task is completed, you’ll pay the price of $35 to the runner for growing facial hair for you.

*Any fees collected by Airtasker will also be donated to the Movember Foundation

So go on, post a task for a good cause! Post a Movember task.

More info will be coming along soon – and if you’ve got any questions, just email our community management team here.

You can find more info on Movember here.

Today was a huge day for Airtasker, with community members using the power of a connected services marketplace to save time and earn money amidst the buzz of Apple’s amazing new iPhone 5 launch.

As soon as the launch date was announced last week, eager Apple fans started posting tasks to line up and make sure that they got their iPhone as soon as possible. TaskPosters came in all shapes and sizes. From Finder.com.au‘s CEO, Fred Schebesta who assigned famous Airtasker Runner Steven Parkes to line up 4 days early to super eager Apple junkies who requested runners line up at 1.30am the night before and then the (slightly) more conservative Apple fans who wanted to make sure they didn’t miss out by having a runner get in line at 7am, community members were all smiles this morning.

To us, what was really amazing about this week of iPhone mania is that we were able to provide a service to people that they otherwise would have had great trouble finding, and at the same time were able to create more than 35 new (micro) jobs for Airtasker Runners. We saw people from all walks of life getting in on the action, from students (like Will C), to flexible workers (like Ana A) and professional queue specialists (like Steve P) it was great to see so many Airtasker community members get together in one spot. And now that the launch day hype of the iPhone 5 is finally over, we look forward to see what tasks Airtasker users will think of next!

Airtasker Runner Hanna B went the extra mile to bring a smile to the long queue!

Ana A arrived on the scene at the Sydney store at 7am and saved our CEO Tim Fung about 3 hours of his day.

TaskPoster Murray B rocked up past 10am and did an awesome tag out to get his iPhone within a record 10 or so minutes!

Infamous Airtasker Runner Steve P (who lined up first to get the iPad 3 in the world) was at it sgain, this time repping for Sydney startup, Finder.com.au and was pleasantly surprised when our community manager, Farina posted a task for Runner Teresa H to deliver hot breakfast!

Remember this guy? Back in March, our founder and CEO Tim Fung wanted to make sure that he got the first iPad from the Apple Store. He posted this iPad line up task which was swiftly picked up by Airtasker Stephen P who waited over 4 days to make sure that he completed the task!

BREAKING NEWS UPDATE!
STEVE P IS BACK AND LINING UP FOR THE iPHONE 5! Stay tuned to all the updates on our Facebook Page.

Steve P interviewed by FullTimeCasual

Airtasker Steve P. gets interviewed on prime time TV!

Airtasker Steve P. starts lining up…5 days early!

The guys from amaysim make sure Steve can stay connected!

Top Airtasker Runner, Teresa H visited Steve P to deliver his dinner!

Thanks to the Melanoma Institute, Steve P won’t get sunburnt this week

The lovely founders of CarParking.info dropped Steve by some early breakfast!

Up and coming Aussie musician, Andrew Drummond took to the streets to make sure Steve was entertained!

Joe Button founder, Modi Song poses for a happy snap with Steve P

Last week we chatted with a bunch of Airtasker community members about how they had used Airtasker to start simplifying their lives by outsourcing some of those extra chores around the home or office and made a short video which you can view here.

This week we thought we’d speak to some of the guys who are using Airtasker to make some extra money – from students, to freelancers, to semi-retired workers and those just looking to meet people and help out in the community.

We hope you enjoy the video and as always, we’d love to hear your Airtasker story in the comments below.

- Tim

The new iPhone is here and we’re super excited! To make sure we don’t end up waiting for months to get one, Airtaskers are lining up really early outside Apple Stores to be first in the queue. Want to get your iPhone early too?

For $50, we can hold your position in the queue outside your nearest Apple Store in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth. The Airtasker you assign will arrive early, line up and then give you a buzz when they’re at the front of the queue so you can simply rock up and purchase your iPhone. Pure awesomeness!

You can post your iPhone line up tasks here.