Facebook has released two new features. The first one is geared towards brands and allows a brand to see the percentage of fans who saw as well as liked a certain post. This is a welcome development since it enables a deeper understanding of what works and what doesn't, and ultimately leads to a better understanding of facebook content ROI (it's possible to see the split between organic as well as paid promotions), especially since only 16% of fans are expected to see a post by a brand.
The second feature is directed towards users and allows a user to "star" friends. Starring a friend means that the user will see more of that friend's status updates on the wall, and starred friends will appear as a separate item in the left menu as well. For now it seems that this is only for friends, meaning you can't star a brand that you are following. The impact for brands of this feature is so far unknown, but I would think that it's going to be a problem for facebook since more "friends content" will be pushed on your wall rather than brands content. However, it could also be that this is an elaborate way to force brands to use more of the paid advertising features available to still reach through to users. The near future will tell.
