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While we're watching to for signs of whether the economy will grow more quickly or slide back into recession, Forbes contributor Joe McKendrick suggests we watch new technology platforms for signs of recovery. And he says the new platforms "tilt the scales" in favor of entrepreneurs (and consumers) for the following reasons: 1) Technology platforms offer new recruiting and employment tools. 2) Technology platforms offer entrepreneurial resources 3) Technology platforms offer access to capital 4) Technology platforms offer economic boosts for distressed communities or regions 5) Technology platforms offer access to new innovation Read Five Ways Cloud, Social and Mobile Technologies are Lifting Our Economy here .

With the rise of social media and the increasing use of Facebook as a primary gathering spot online, many small companies are considering shifting to Facebook as their primary virtual storefront. Eric Packer , entrepreneur and founder of Small Business Search , says that may work out as the best bang for the buck for small businesses, as long as you think strategically. At Small Business CEO , Packer shares four tips for those business owners and marketing managers looking to focus on Facebook. The first tip: "Don't Be Boring!": With a standard website, it is okay to post relatively dry, informative content. If people come across this site, it’s likely because they were already searching for something that you were selling. However, people don’t go on Facebook when they want to purchase things. They go on Facebook when they want to be entertained by links and posts from their friends. In order to use your Facebook site effectively, you need to update it at least several times a week with entertaining content. What is entertaining content? Being told what to do in the form of a blatant advertisement is not entertaining. An informative article about things that your product does might entertain. A comedy video based on your product is definitely entertainment. Behind-the-scenes footage of popular events might be intriguing. Weird, unexpected happenings are fun to share. Automated posts are not entertaining. Completely random posts might entertain a few people. A variety of unique posts and content types centered on a similar theme, style or brand of writing and content sharing is definitely entertaining. On your small business Facebook site, people see your content next to their friends’ content. You have to be at least as worthy of attention as interpersonal relationships if you want to be successful. Read Packer's other tips here .

Erin Albert , author of the new book Single. Women. Entrepreneurs. , wants more young women to consider starting their own businesses. At Entrepreneur she offers up five tips on how to prepare for startup: 1. Get educated. 2. Get "intrapreneurial." ("Thinking and acting like an entrepreneur while working for someone else") 3. Get comfortable with failure. 4. Get out there. 5. Get fully committed. Read Albert's explanations for these important steps here .

It is a very common approach for entrepreneurs trying to grow a young business: keep costs down by taking on more of the day-to-day tasks required to keep the business going. And it can work well, but maybe not for long. Once it is time for the company to take the next steps and become bigger, the founder may need to go back to leading the company and not being the company. Or, as Freedom Growth CEO David Coe writes at Small Business CEO , "learn how to work on your business instead of working at your business." And Coe offers up these four tips for small business owners ready to take the next steps in building revenue: Understand the Value of Your Time Find Scalability in your Earnings Maintain Your Brand Don’t Forget Why You Started Read Working On Your Business, Not At It here .

The New York Times has an interesting profile of The Young Entrepreneur Council . The council was started by Scott Gerber , who created the promotional video company Sizzle It after graduating from NYU (and moving back in with his parents in Staten Island). Hannah Seligson gives the details of the council: The council consists of 80-plus business owners across the country, ages 17 to 33. Members include Scott Becker, 23, co-founder of Invite Media, an advertising technology firm recently acquired by a Google unit; Lauren Berger, 26, founder of the Intern Queen , a site that connects college students with internships; Aaron Patzer , the 30-year-old who sold Mint.com to Intuit for $170 million; and Josh Weinstein, 24, who started CollegeOnly.com , a social networking site that is backed by a PayPal founder. The council, which has applied for nonprofit status, serves as a help desk and mentoring hotline for individual entrepreneurs. People can also submit questions on subjects like marketing, publicity and technology, and each month a group of council members will answer 30 to 40 of them in business publications like The Wall Street Journal and American Express Open Forum, and on dozens of small business Web sites. Council members assert that young people can start businesses even if they have little or no money or experience. But whether those start-ups last is another matter. Roughly half of all new businesses fail within the first five years, according to federal data. And the entrepreneurial life is notoriously filled with risks, stresses and sacrifices. Read No Jobs? Young Graduates Make Their Own here .

Risk taking is an important part of developing innovative ideas. And Peter Thiel , President of the venture capital firm Clarium Capital , believes that some young people are forced to be risk averse when they take on enormous debt to attend college. So he's encouraging some of them to drop out of school for a couple of years, and paying them to take on entrepreneurial pursuits: Watch the full interview from Big Think here .

Vivek Wadhwa , visiting scholar in UC Berkeley's School of Information notices that a lot of online posts about women entrepreneurs tend to accept the notion that women are less likely to run startups because they have different responsibilities than men (he points to this TechCrunch post as an example). He thinks this line of thinking is framed by people looking closely at the startup culture of Silicon Valley. When we expand our view to startups across the country, even of tech startups, Wadhwa notes that many of the stereotypes of entrepreneurs get broken down. For example, after studying 649 different tech startups, Wadhwa's research team found that the average age of tech company founders is 39-40--not the early 20s. And, he writes, "there was almost no difference between men and women company founders." Both groups had an equally strong desire to build wealth; wanted to capitalize on business ideas; were attracted to the culture of startups; had long-standing desire to own their own company; and were tired of working for others. There were, however, slight differences between the encouragement that women received from co-founders and what men received; and women received slightly more funding than men did from business partners. Equally importantly, we found no difference in life circumstances between men and women founders. Their average ages when founding their first companies were the same. Likewise, successful men and women entrepreneurs founded their first companies when they had similar numbers of children living at home, though men were more likely than women to be married. But there is certainly an imbalance between the sexes entering high-tech fields, and that imbalance is increasing over time. The proportion of women studying computer science decreased from 37 percent in 1985 to 19 percent today, according to the National Science Foundation. The imbalance stems from the lack of encouragement that girls receive from their parents to study mathematics and science, and escalates when they join the workforce and receive discouragement. Only one percent of high-tech startups have a woman CEO; there are almost no women in the ranks of chief technology officers. Marital status when starting business Read Men and women entrepreneurs: Not that different here .

Dr. Steven Berglas -executive coach and author-spent most of his professional life on the faculty of Harvard Medical School's department of psychiatry. And as both coach and psychiatrist, he has become interested in a group of people he calls "serial entrepreneurs." These are people who make the brave move of starting a business, going through the ups and downs of success and failure. Then do it again. And again. And while most people become "more risk averse" as they get older and more experienced, according to Berglas, these "serial entrepreneurs" only become more spirited and willing to take more leaps. And Berglas believes that they are driven by "purpose" more than profit: Serial entrepreneurs want to make a buck, sure. They might even want to show up a nagging authority figure from their past. But what they really want, above all, is to change the world. (In psychiatry this attribute is known as generativity--a passion to improve the planet for successive generations.) Revolutionizing industries might be one approach; combating an injustice or influencing policy are two more. Of course serial entrepreneurs take pride in their accomplishments; so, too, do they suffer self-doubt. The difference is that they respond to ups and downs with relative equanimity. Reason: Their work isn't about single victories--building once and settling in for the long, secure fade. Changing the world is a quest. And that work is never done. Read Why Serial Entrepreneurs Can't Stop at Forbes , here .