small business

Facebook released some new numbers today for its local business Pages, revealing that about 2 percent of the Pages have used promoted posts.

The social network said it's reached 13 million local Pages now -- up from the 12.8 million last reported during its earnings call in October -- and 300,000 of those have promoted more than 2.5 million posts. Promoted posts are ones that Pages pay for to make sure they reach more of their Facebook fans.

According to a Facebook representative, Facebook Director of Global SMB Markets Dan Levy went over some of these … Read more

Facebook, as part of its ongoing attempt to make money off mobile, is letting businesses with Facebook pages promote posts using an app on their smartphones.

The newest version of Facebook's Pages Manager app allows users to pick their promoted posts -- i.e., posts the social network will shoot out to users far and wide, for a modest fee -- directly from the app. The app is only available on iPhone and iPad.

The ability to buy the ads directly from mobile phones was a widely requested feature from small businesses, according to Facebook.

It's just the … Read more

Evernote is expanding its cloud-based clipping and documents platform to small businesses with the introduction of Evernote Business.

Announced amid the Evernote Trunk Conference in San Francisco today, Evernote Business is touted to optimize the "remember everything" app for businesses by allowing employees to create, collaborate and find documents and projects from wherever they are. The extra business-friendly add-on is that the platform should support organization-wide deployment, including the option for company-wide sharing for individual notes and notebooks. However, individual users will still have full ownership over their personal Evernote notebooks.From the management side, Evernote Business includes … Read more

Square launched a flat-rate monthly fee today for small-business owners, turning the credit card industry on its head again.

Merchants who process up to $250,000 in customer payments per year using the card reader can pay a monthly rate of $275, instead of 2.75 percent per swipe, according to a press release from Square. The monthly fee includes the usual Square perks -- no additional fees and no contract.

Square -- known for its small, square card reader that can be plugged into mobile devices to create an instant credit card machine -- said it is "leveling … Read more

Before there were ultrabooks, we always had a soft spot in our heart for the Vostro, a smartly designed, slim, and surprisingly affordable small-business laptop line from Dell that borrowed some design touches from the long-departed Adamo.… Read more

Twitter has finally begun a slow-motion rollout of a plan to generate advertising dollars from small businesses with a low-key, self-serve ad program.

Initially, only a small group of businesses will have access to this new advertising opportunity -- Twitter wouldn't say how many, although a spokesman allowed that the number of participating small businesses will "steadily increase" in coming weeks. If it works as advertised --no pun intended --this could be a very big deal for the company, one that could allow it to tap into a huge new swathe of potential advertisers.

The hope within … Read more

One of the added benefits to the next generation of Intel Ivy Bridge processors coming later this year is its native support of Thunderbolt. The newly announced high-end ThinkPad Edge S430 will feature Thunderbolt as one of a bevy of extra features aimed at taking this middle-range small business line of laptops up a notch.

It's unclear whether it will feature Ivy Bridge, but considering that the new CPUs will release in June, coinciding with the S430's release, we can guess that it's likely that the S430 will feature the new Intel processors.

The Edge S430 doesn't look particularly striking, but Lenovo promises metal accents and a soft-touch finish that might make holding it more impressive. Besides having "the latest Intel Core processors," additional options will include an optical drive or, alternatively, a second hard drive, and Nvidia Optimus graphics. The Edge S430 will start at $749. … Read more

Our beef with most so-called business software is that it's often poorly designed, hard to navigate, and of questionable value. If time is money, no one wants to waste time trying to figure out software that makes simple tasks much harder and more frustrating than they need to be. That's why we were pleasantly surprised by Whistler Small Business Software. This program packs an unusual number of essential business tools into an intuitive package that just about anyone can master.

The program started by having us configure our business information, and then a setup wizard walked us through … Read more

Big week ahead, fellow cheapskates! And I'm kicking it off with my annual guest appearance on CNET's Holiday Help Desk, which airs live today at 12 p.m. PT/3 p.m. ET. The big topic, of course, is Black Friday, and if you think you know what I'm going to say about it, think again. Hope you'll tune in!

That said, let's table Black Friday for a moment and talk Sweet Saturday. On November 26, American Express is sponsoring an event called Small Business Saturday. The upshot: Spend at least $25 at any … Read more