Newtek Business Services, The Small Business Authority, with a portfolio of over 100,000 business accounts, announced today the findings of its SB Authority Market Sentiment Survey, a monthly window into the concerns of independent business owners. Based on a poll of over 2,800 respondents, one of the key findings from the August survey is 47 percent of business owners use Facebook for their small business.  It is crucial to understand that individuals and businesses do not own their Facebook pages, Facebook does.  Business owners also should be aware that there could be a lot of misinformation shared through this social media platform regarding their business due to security issues that Facebook accounts have.

The full August 2012 results showed the following:

Barry Sloane, Chairman, President and CEO of The Small Business Authority commented, "The results of our survey came in as expected.  Facebook is a revolutionary and evolutionary product for small business owners.  Facebook has provided them with a cost effective, "free" way to have a web presence, as well as a tool to communicate with customers and suppliers.  Facebook has taken small companies and provided them with a big presence for no cost.  As recently analyzed on Forbes, we firmly believe that there is a cost to business owners that have a Facebook account.  Small business owners are giving away their customer information including preferences, spending patterns and contact information.  If you were a business owner and were offered $72 for all of your customers' valuable information, would you sell it?  The answer is NO.  Business owners would be better off obtaining a free website from The Small Business Authority and only pay $72 for a shared hosting plan in the cloud that is secure rather than give up ownership of their website.  We believe that over course of time, the business owners surveyed will lean towards increased privacy and security for their customer information."