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Facebook is offering up to $10 million in free advertising to small businesses in the middle of slight changes to how the social networking site allows brands and consumers to interact on its Pages.

The social networking site will give at least $50 to up to 200,000 small business in a partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business.

Facebook estimated global ad revenues will jump to $3.8 billion, more than double the social networking giant's 2010 total.

Ad revenue for the site, which has over 750 million registered users, will miss the expected $4.05 billion mark, according to analysts, but the slowdown in growth is explained as a diversification into other revenue streams like Facebook Credits.

Yossy Mendolovich CEO of IMGuest, the world's only hotel management social network, has launched a service that flips the script on how marketing people interact with guests at prominent chains.

IMGuest is a premium marketing tool launched three days ago that enables marketing and guest relations staff to use the social graph to interact with hotel guests at check-in. From that moment on, staff can push out discounts and other offers to them instantaneously based on their interests.

Steve Jobs has announced his resignation as CEO of Apple. He will remain chairman of the board of directors. Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook has been named as his replacement. The Apple co-founder has taken medical leave for health problems this year, fueling much speculation about Apple's life after Steve. The swift confirmation of Cook as CEO indicates a smooth transition as part of Apple's succession plan.

From inspiring Windows to pioneering creative uses of personal computers to popularizing quality industrial design and mobile media consumption, to finally delivering on the sci-fi promise of tablet computing, Jobs has been at the forefront of global cultural evolution for decades.

LinkedIn shared its Q2 earnings today in its first earnings announcement as a public company. Usage numbers are up significantly, with 115.8 million members, up 61% from Q2 2010, and 81.8 million monthly unique visitors, 83% more than last year.

Net revenue growth was not as strong, but CEO Jeff Weiner says this is due to heavy reinvestment in the growth and development of the site. LinkedIn earned $4.5 million in net income this quarter, compared to $4.3 million last year, just a 5% increase. But their top-line revenue was up considerably, more than doubling since Q2 2010. Before costs, they pulled in $121 million last quarter.

Google continues its plodding march into the local deals space. They've just acquired The Dealmap, which aggregates local offers and displays them on a Google-powered map. This makes a natural, almost obvious addition to Google's range of local business products as it expands its mobile and social platforms. The acquisition of The Dealmap is a signal that deals will be integrated directly into Google Maps and other location searches, but the details remain to be seen. Google has quite a few location services on the table right now, and they don't yet sync up into a coherent user experience.

Facebook has a new tutorial to set up small and medium businesses on the social platform for success. Dubbed Facebook for Business, the page is an "education center" that teaches businesses how to create Pages, advertisements, Sponsored Stories and Facebook Platform, which covers apps, social plugins and Facebook Credits. Anybody who has spent any time on Facebook knows that these are not particularly hard things to do but the news is interesting in the light of Google kicking brands off Google Plus last week.

Facebook for Business looks almost exactly like Facebook for Journalists, an initiative that the company rolled out last month to help reporters, writers, TV and radio personalities set up their own pages to post content and be "Liked" without making their personal profiles public. It seems a touch odd that Facebook would focus on journalists first and not businesses, as it is far more likely that businesses would buy ads to promote their products on the store front, whereas only the most hardcore of personal branding journalists buy any type of ads. Yet, it may be a matter of targeting online influencers first.

LinkedIn has just announced a Web plug-in that lets employers add a one-click "Apply with LinkedIn" button to job postings.

Apply with LinkedIn allows applicants to adjust their LinkedIn profile information to suit the position before they apply. After they submit, the confirmation screen displays people in the applicant's LinkedIn network who work at the company, allowing them to connect or ask for a referral.

It's finally here. Mass customization, or the practice of offering consumers the ability to customize products to their liking before purchasing them, is poised to turn manufacturing on its head and revolutionize business. Hallelujah!

But haven't we heard this before? Indeed, mass customization's revolutionary impact was touted as the next big thing in 2000. And in 1993. And also in 1970. That's right, as early as forty years ago, business thinkers were predicting the dawn of mass customization and extolling its paradigm-shifting impact on industry.

New technologies, such as collaboration tools and mobile devices, create new opportunities for enterprises to innovate and provide better customer service. But they also introduce new costs and new risks.

In an executive brief sponsored by Qwest Business, IDC outlines the security, compliance and cost issues facing the organization of today.