My company, drop.io, has just shy of and . While by no means are either of these numbers earth-shattering, social media has always been at the absolute center of how we as a company interact with our most dedicated users and customers, and we take it very seriously as a primary means of keeping up an ongoing dialogue with our community.

As such, whenever either Facebook or make changes to their platforms, we take those changes very seriously. Having spent an initial few days playing with and thinking about the changes Facebook is making to their fan page system, I must admit that I think it will radically effect the way in which we as a brand can and will use Facebook--this time for the better. Had you asked me last week, I would have said that Twitter is a far more important and rapidly growing channel for us than is Facebook, but I am not sure I will have the same feeling going forward.

By way of background, Facebook fan pages were historically a slightly orthogonal aspect of the Facebook service. They allowed brands, which originally didn't have any profile or presence on the Facebook service, to have a specific place in the ecosystem. Over time, Facebook actually degraded the presence and power of fan pages by hiding individual brand 'fan' status on a secondary tab in the profile, and changing the ability of a brand to even reach out to fans.

As of the latest change, pages now have a look, feel, and function largely consistent with user profiles on Facebook. Most importantly, brands can now post status updates, just as regular users can. While this might sound cosmetic, it actually makes all the difference in the world in terms of how we as a company can and will interact with our customers through the service.

This means that our brand not only has static presence on Facebook with the ability to receive wall posts and the odd rating, but we have an active and evolving voice that we can use. Just as we do with Twitter, when we have an announcement to make, want to share a new screencast, or ask for fan participation, we can post status, and it will filter it's way through to those who are interested. Best yet, as we do things of note and start up a consistent 'discussion' the responses, status updates, wall posts, etc., of others will theoretically refer people back to our brand.