Facebook is nurturing a novel and democratic approach to major changes it proposes to make on the website, according to an online expert.

Rachel Hawkes, the co-founder and co-editor of the Social Media Portal, stated that the decision made by Facebook to put site governance issues to a user-based vote was an excellent one.

She said it shows that previous criticisms of the website for not being transparent enough were swiftly responded to by the site's owners.

Ms Hawkes continued: "The most significant impact that this will have for Facebook users is that even though Facebook didn't get the numbers of votes they were expecting, any future changes to the site governance will be put to a vote."

She also praised how Facebook is now becoming more of an inclusive community for its users.

Facebook now has over 200 million active users, with half of them logging on at least once a day.

More than half of small businesses (53 per cent) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support. London-based Connect conducted the research in 2007.