Facebook has today launched a new microsite called Facebook for Business. It’s a good little site containing best practices as well as further information on business services such as advertising.

There is always much discussion about whether brands should use Facebook as part of their marketing and PR efforts but, with Facebook soon to hit the 1bn user mark (and counting), it would be foolish for any company – consumer or B2B – to totally discount it.

The importance of businesses for Facebook

This new site is as clear a sign as any that Facebook is focusing more on businesses and is actively helping and encouraging them to become more active on the network.

I’ve talked before about why Facebook has gone down this route, but with Twitter seeing massive popularity driven by the way it is being used by companies, Facebook has been looking enviously on for a while now. In fact the microsite is very similar in many ways to the resource that Twitter has had for businesses for some time now.

Feeling the pressure?

Another potential driver for this move is Google+. Google has been making waves recently with the new service that has taken the (tech) world by storm.

And, despite criticisms about how Google is handling businesses on the network so far, there are reports that the company has exciting plans for business profiles.

Twitter has promised much but really failed to deliver on business accounts, so Google could still win the battle here. Facebook will be keen to do everything in its power to stop this from happening.

And with Mark Zuckerberg (the man that has more Google+ followers than anyone!) promising a whole slew of new announcements in the near future, is Facebook starting to feel the pressure?