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Facebook came up trumps against Google again this week (which seems to be becoming a bit of a habit), when a survey revealed that more small businesses use the social networking site to promote themselves than they do Google.

Online small business network MerchantCircle made the discovery when it surveyed 8,400 SMEs and found that 70% now report using Facebook as a marketing tool – compared to 66% who prefer the likes of Google Adwords.

Features such as location-based service Facebook Places are making the site a more exciting place for SMEs, as they explore the possibilities on offer.  Thirty-two per cent say they now dabble with Places, and 12% more say they’ll start using at some point this year.

Although the survey is US-based, it’s an indicator nonetheless of the continuing fascination brands have with location-based marketing techniques. Foursquare, which last week appeared to be displaying a lacklustre approach to breaking into the UK market, might want to take note!

“Online marketing continues to be a challenge for most local businesses, and many merchants are working with very small budgets and almost no marketing resources,” says Darren Waddell, vice president of marketing at MerchantCircle. “The marketing methods we see gaining the most traction are therefore the ones that offer merchants simplicity, low costs and immediate results.”

A mountain of mobile news came tumbling out of last week’s Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona –gizmos, gadgets and games galore. We thought we’d wait for the dust to settle a little and for the Spanish city to breathe a sigh of relief as 50,000 phone fanatics head home, before giving you a run-down of our top five stories to come out of the event.

Google’s Android took centre stage

That little green Android dude was everywhere at this year’s event. In a particularly clever marketing ploy, Google produced 86 different version of its Android mascot, stuck them on badges and scattered them amongst the stands of its various partners exhibiting at the event.  Maps were given to attendees outlining the challenge to collect all 86. Google’s collectors game quickly became the talk to the show.

Its stand was pretty unmissable too. An ‘Android-themed’ playground, complete with huge green Android robots even featured a giant green slide.

Such was Google’s unmissable presence that it proved, once and for all, that the Android brand is of huge importance to the mobile industry. Traditionally, this conference has been all about the carriers. This year, it was more about the software platforms powering the mobile industry.

The iPad got some serious competition

We knew it was coming anyway, but the sheer number of iPad competitors to make their debut last week really hammered home just how open the tablet market is set to become. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 2, the LG OptimusTab and the HTC Scribe were all on show – whilst the Motorola Xoom created plenty of buzz when it was announced that it is to hit European shop shelves within weeks (on Friday, it was announced that it will be available in the UK at the Carphone Warehouse this summer). It will also be the first tablet PC to run Honeycomb – version 3.0 of Google’s Android operating system.

Bye bye Symbian

A lot of talk at this year’s event centred on news that Nokia is to ditch its own Symbian operating system and start using Microsoft’s Windows platform instead. The new partnership has been met with mixed reviews. HTC’s chief marketing officer John Wang reckons it will “make the ecosystem even better for everybody, including HTC.” But analysts have speculated the move might scare off smaller manufacturers like HTC and LG Electronics Inc. Google’s Eric Schmidt meanwhile said he felt “sorry” for Nokia for choosing the competition, adding that Google would welcome the Finnish manufacturer with open arms, should it want a crack at having Android software on its handsets instead.

Smartphones outpace the PC

In his keynote speech at the conference, Google’s Schmidt pointed out that in the week before, Smartphones sales had surpassed PC ones. “By the way,” he said, “PCs are not catching up. Smartphones are the future of games, productivity, apps, everything we think about. You have the phone, the new PC, if you will.”

Social networking and cloud computing – both buzz phrases in Barcelona – are encouraging more and more people to connect via their handsets over the traditional PC. 2011 is, in the eyes of many, the year in which mobiles (and tablets) topple the PCs crown.

Augmented reality hit the limelight

There was lots of augmented reality technology on show at the conference. Mobile chip maker Qualcomm showed off a mobile version that creates animated graphics over the top of real life images. It showed a demo built for Mattel’s “Rock Em Sock Em” wrestling toy. It works like this – you point your camera at a Mattel graphic, the phone recognises that it’s a Mattel graphic, and up pop two computerised wrestling figures on your screen that you can control and move around with the phone. The jury is still out on the future of augmented reality within marketing, but the technology is quirky and interesting all the same.

Yesterday the History Channel announced a partnership with location-based social network foursquare. The History Channel, quite rightly, is rather excited by the news – a cool app that encourages users ‘check-in’ to historical sites around London to receive intriguing tips facts, discount deals and badges. They’re going to heavily promote the partnership on its TV channel and via its email and social media platforms.

But the burning question (for us anyway) that remains unanswered is – what is the advantage for foursquare? Partnerships like these surely help ramp up its status in the UK which is, quite frankly, lacking to date.  Foursquare does lots of stuff with brands in the US, but besides some dabblings by Domino’s Pizza and Jimmy Choo, there seems to be little on offer for foursquare members here besides just ‘checking-in’.  Partnerships mean being able to offer consumers discounts and deals, which gives the incentive for said consumers to keep use foursquare  – reports have started to surface on users in the UK getting ‘foursquare fatigue’ because they’re just not gaining much from it.

So it was surprising then not to see a foursquare representative at yesterday’s event bigging up well, foursquare. And annoying that on returning to the office and attempting to contact foursquare’s press office that we could only email them (they don’t have a phone number). So we emailed them. We asked them what was exciting about the History Channel deal for them and whether it marked the beginning of more exciting things from foursquare in the UK.

Several hours later, we received this response from Jonathan Crowley, director of business development, media partnerships at foursquare:

“We pass by historic places all the time, without ever realizing (sic) the significance. We’re excited about the way History UK is leveraging the foursquare platform to deliver historic tips and information when it’s relevant to a user’s location.”

That doesn’t answer our question at all. Plus, the comment refers to History UK (the channel is called History). Plus the email arrived two hours after our specified deadline.

With such hot competition from Facebook’s Places Deals, foursquare’s apparent indifference surprises us, and makes us think that maybe it’s not so bothered about PRing itself in the UK after all. Places Deals has around 200 million users in total. Foursquare has around six million. It’s got some catching up to do. And its press office could do with checking into their emails a bit more quickly, too.

By Bruce Townsend of ecommerce software specialist, Actinic

The big tech story of the month so far has been the new alliance between Nokia and Microsoft, which will see the world’s biggest mobile phone supplier drop its own proprietary operating system, Symbian, and adopt Windows as its operating system of choice.

The full implications of this new alliance remain to be seen, and no-one can yet tell how successful it will be. But what might be the future implications for marketing?

1 – Firstly, the default search engine for Nokia devices in future will be Bing, not Google. Many users will no doubt change the default and switch back to Google anyway. But the move will undoubtedly increase Bing’s share of search on mobile devices. At the same time, its alliance with Yahoo! will see the popular portal dropping its own search engine and taking its search results from Microsoft. This will double Bing’s share of web search at a stroke.

So we can expect Microsoft to increase its overall share of search significantly in 2011 and, along with it, its share of paid search revenue. Now might be a good time to check out your website’s rankings on Bing, and take action if it is not what it could be.

2 – One of the key attractions for Microsoft is access to Nokia’s GPS and local search system, Ovi Maps. Nokia has invested far more into this system that Microsoft has into Bing Local. It is a fully-blown mobile search and satnav application, entirely capable of competing with Google Maps on equal terms. It has the added advantage over Google that map data can be downloaded to the mobile device, which means you can use the satnav functionality without needing an internet connection.

Ovi Maps will remain a key component of Nokia’s mobile devices, and is likely to become more tightly integrated into the Windows Phone platform and Bing Mobile. If your company is not already listed on Ovi Maps, you can submit it here now.