Seeing the positive response to sites like http://tinyproj.com and http://weekendhacker.net, it seems like highly competent freelancers would benefit from a middle ground between the somewhat impersonal market of eLance/oDesk and the inefficient method of seeking work via personal networks. Something like a "hackers guild" of people who have been vetted for quality work. Projects could be semi-automatically assigned to single or multiple individuals based on the importance of the project as measured by the dollar value attached to it and the skill of the individuals as measured by their historical feedback ratings.
Maybe this is just my naive impression as an undergrad approaching graduation who would prefer freelancing to a 9-5 or even a startup but hasn't come to terms yet with the fact that inefficiency in the matching process and initially low rates are unavoidable. If not and you'd be interested in building or using such a system, I'd like to talk to you. It also relates to emerging things like the "reputation graph" and transitive delegation that can enable these sorts of systems, and are going to be huge (see http://blog.hyperarchy.com, http://liquidfeedback.org, http://rglabsinc.com).