IT skills top the in-demand list at online freelance marketplace

When it comes to the tech job market, we'll take good news where we can get it - even if it's a big demand for IT skills in a booming online marketplace for freelancers.

Called elance.com, the site is seeing about 50 percent growth in the number of jobs its filling, roughly 157,000 in the past year. But what was interesting about the site's trends is the demand for IT skills - especially among app developers. The site regularly tracks the top 10 skills in demand, based on the postings on the site. The top two were Graphic Design and PHP, with MySQL in third place and Joomla! in 8th place.

The site connects businesses and freelancers but does more than that. It also manages the relationship through the cloud - from the actual posting of the job to invoicing, payment and feedback. Currently, there are about 96,000 experts active on Elance and that more than 62,000 businesses are actively using the site.

Watch out if you're trying to sell your social media skills, though. Demand for Twitter (#71) expertise dropped 25 slots and both Facebook (#63) and Social Networking (#45) also falling this month. As for those Google skills - Google Website Optimizer (#31) made a big leap this month while Google Analytics (#93) and Google AdSense (#68) making their debuts.

The company notes that some regulars on the site are working "full time" on freelance work obtained through the site.