The clue of Social Media Marketing is reaching potential customers through those a brand already has. When companies deliver a great product or service they can leverage Social Media by engaging greatest fans who in return naturally recommend them to their friends within their social networks, which is of course a great added value to a company.
Since Facebook is a huge Social Media platform for brands to connect with their fans, it is very important how it enables these recommendations. Facebook did have this functionality called "Suggest to Friends". You could easily invite your friends to a Page, also with an option of adding a personal note. It's gone now. Why? Apparently, users haven't really used it except for Page admins.
As we all have noticed from our experience Facebook doesn't really communicate these changes well. Some brands haven't managed to catch on with them.
So what will brands get in return? I remember asking the same question a year ago when Applications' notifications where removed from the popular Facebook Notification service. And actually they didn't get anything in return. That is why developers like Zynga spent quite a lot of money last year on Facebook Social Ads in order to maintain the popularity of their apps.
I don't think this will be the case of Pages. Facebook will do something to improve the Page product. For instance some of the features have been undervalued like "Send an Update".
The reason why they were undervalued is that nobody actually reads them, as they are not really exposed to users on Facebook. Updates are called "Other Messages" and it's really a destination for very few Facebook users.
This might soon change. Facebook seems to experiment and display "Unread Updates" in all new places like the left column of "My Profile".
There will definitely be more changes to come. In my opinion the current conditions for brands to reconnect with their fans is pretty insignificant. Once you stop engage with a branded Page, you stop having its content displayed on your Home Page due to Facebook algorithms that filter only "relevant" stories.
Pages struggle for users' attention and they do not only fight with other Pages, they fight with friends, too. The amount of friends average Facebook user have is growing each day. How will Facebook deal with the issue when a typical user will have 200 friends or more? I shall leave you with no clear answer.
