Today, Facebook published a new page dedicated to helping its users get the most out of their Business Account, just days after Google announced they were accelerating their business profile development.
It could be a coincidence that Facebook have waited until now to release a useful guide on getting the most out of their Business account, but it comes just 3 days after Google decided to speed up their own Business Profile development, as a result of its popularity with businesses even before its beta release. Perhaps, this is a sign that Facebook regard Google as a serious threat to their hold on Social, and are frantically looking at ways to fight back before its too late.
The contest of who will reign as Social leader has not begun yet (Google+ is still invite only), but when it does, things will definitley get interesting. It seems the fundamental features of Google+ (e.g. Circles, Hangouts) are far greater than those of Facebook, however Facebook obviously has a massive head start. Still, when Google+ launches its Business (or «Entity» account), it will come with integration to some already existing features that are hugely popular with Businesses; namely Analytics, and Adwords.
The debate over who will come out on top will rumble on for quite some time yet, but I’d guess Google. Facebook has the headstart with its existing followers, but time has proven (e.g. FriendsReunited, Myspace) that this popularity is not guaranteed. Users will rapidly move on if they find something better, and it seems that that the features of Facebook are already lacking to the potential of Google+’s main features.
But with healthy competition like this, the real winner is the consumer.