Competition is good for any industry. It’s healthy. And we all like to have options. In the area of social networking, Facebook is currently at the top for many reasons. If you use Facebook, especially as a business or something other than personal, you already know those reasons. Of course there are other social networking services, but quite honestly, there hasn’t been anything that comes close to what Facebook offers. That is, not until Google decided to get into the game.

When Google announced their social networking service, Google+, it seemed as though Facebook’s reign at the top would soon come to an end. Google+ was all the hype, especially because you could only get Google+ accounts by invitation only. I’m a big fan of Google, so naturally, I was excited to see what Google+ could offer and signed up right away. After a couple weeks of using Google+, my initial excitement turned into disappointment. G+ didn’t offer anything different from Facebook. The way stories are shared viewed are presented differently, but fundamentally, their G+’s offerings are identical to Facebook’s. As a business, G+ didn’t give me any reason to use its services because they didn’t have any services that catered to businesses. For this reason, my disappointment in G+ turned into wonder. As in, I wondered when G+ will fold and meet its fate like Google Wave and Google Buzz.

Today, with the announcement of Google+ Pages for businesses and brands, my wonder has turned to hope! For CHAOTIME, there’s finally a solid reason to use Google+. Even though it isn’t ready yet, I think this new service will give Google+ a much needed recharge and bring its activity level back up (my current G+ stream is a ghost town). Here’s the official Google announcement of Google+ Pages for businesses and brands.

Will this be the beginning of the end for Facebook? We’ll see just have to wait and see…

UPDATE: Create your own Google+ Page here!