Facebook for Business debuts: 1-up over 'social-only' Google+

Last night, Facebook's latest "feature set" is set towards the business end of the social network user base.

Designed for small, medium and large businesses alike, the new Facebook for Business Center is the company's attempt at bringing nay-sayers and skeptics towards the 700 million users and advertise, sell and "grow your business".

If you were expecting jazz bands and an all-singing all-dancing welcome, you may be disappointed. In reality, it consolidates pages, adverts, sponsored stories and platform elements of the site and assists business newbies into how Facebook can work for them.

(Image via Flickr)

As Colleen Taylor points out, the timing for this is key. With so many Facebookers defecting to Google+, yet with a brewing controversy over 'real names' -- something Facebook users have had to contend with for some time -- the timing for this business update is important for competition.

But as Google+ is still in its infancy, yet to be used en mass by businesses, and still only used by a small proportion of the users that Facebook has to offer, Facebook is effectively asserting its dominance over the up and coming star of the social world.

While social is not going away any time soon, Facebook is an immensely powerful platform to take advantage of. But with skeptics dismissing social as a fad, it will fall down to one, simple thing: get in, or your business will fail.