I’ve contributed an article in this week’s Mandag Morgen (in Norwegian, not online) about how tiny service companies – even one-person outfits – can participate successfully in the global economy. The story focuses on several portals such as GetAFreelancer.com that match buyers and sellers of services. Many of the projects are fairly small, often the transactions are just a few hundred dollars. The portals have been active for years, but haven’t received much media attention.

The main example I describe is Asia Observer, a news portal/community site run by Norwegian journalist and previous Asia correspondent John Einar Sandvand. The site has been around since 1999, but last year Sandvand wanted a major renewal. So he posted the job on two of the portals and found his Belgrade-based programmer through Joomlancers. Recently he expanded the spare-time project further by hiring a part-time employee through the Manila version of Craigslist. So now the site which has a growing community is run and developed by three people living very far apart from each other who have never met physically. That’s microglobalization.