According to Inside Facebook Gold, which tracks Facebook growth, the site had a decrease in monthly active users at the start of June compared to the start of May in the U.S. and a few other countries. But reports from Compete, comScore, Google Ad Planner and Quantcast show different results.

Inside Facebook Gold found a decrease in active users from 155.2 million at the start of May to 149.4 million at the start of June. Compete, however, found Facebook both gaining and losing users month-to-month over the past year, ComScore and Quantcast found Facebook grew slightly, and Google Ad Planner shows a slight decline in the past few months.

But despite differing statistics, Facebook is continuing to develop innovative ways to promote local businesses with two new features on the Places Page: Recommend This Place and Community Edits.

The Recommend This Place sidebar allows users to write a recommendation to be published on the news feed and shown on the Page to friends. Community Edits asks users to fill in information for popular places in a specific city to be posted on their page. Each feature creates an unique channel through which local businesses can grow.

Facebook still remains a cheap and efficient way for small businesses to increase their online presence, improve their search engine optimization, and reach out to untapped consumers cost-effectively.

Customer retention news provided by 123Print.com - providers of custom loyalty cards, business cards, postcards and other high quality, low price tools to help businesses retain customers.