Facebook for business' debuts

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Facebook has debuted a step-by-step online guide aimed at helping small businesses use the social networking site.

The company is billing the new webpage, found at Facebook.com/business, as an "online education centre" that gives directions on such things as how to set up a profile page, create targeted ads and deals, and interact with customer feedback online.

The timing is interesting, as it comes just a week afterGoogle began shutting off all company profiles on its Google + social network. The search engine giant says it's just company policy to restrict Google+ access to individual users, a stance that has inspired a good deal of controversy in recent days.

Facebook's new business webpage does not come along with any new features, it simply puts a lot of information that may be handy for small businesses in one place. Perhaps most importantly, it serves as a nicely timed reminder that unlike Google+, Facebook encourages companies to use its service for company branding.

"Facebook allows small businesses to create rich social experiences, build lasting relationships and amplify the most powerful type of marketing, word of mouth," a Facebook spokesperson wrote in an email. "We created Facebook.com/business to make it even easier for people to reach these objectives and grow."

This represents the second time in a month that Facebook has followed Google+ news with its own feature launch. Earlier in July, Facebook announced a partnership withSkype to bring video chat features within the social networking site, just one week after Google+ made waves with its own in-app video chat feature called Hangouts.