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How's Facebook page working for you?

As I wrote a few weeks ago, I love words, keywords, etymology and just watching semantic change, both online and off.

And I really get a kick out of Web 2.0 terms...followers, following, likes or no likes. So if you have a thousands you follow and no followers, does that make you a natural follower? Or the reverse--if you have a zillion followers and follow none or 1 or 2, are you a natural born leader?

The same for "likes." If you like many but have no likes, are you unlikeable? Okay, I'll stop since I'm sounding like Andy Rooney even to me.

But since this is a post about FB, I have to talk more about their recent language change of 2 separate funtions. As you know, it's the changing of "Become a Fan" to "Like." Now, you "like" a post on the wall, and you "like" the FB page itself. While it doesn't appear that the functionality changed all that much, I'm a bit confused because with the old choice of words, I felt there was more flexibility. For instance, I'll become a fan but that doesn't mean I "like" everything on your page. So now that I have to like your page and not just an item on it,...does this assume I like EVERYthing on it? Well, maybe I'm analyzing too much. Besides how much can I really discuss FB functionality since I do not even have a page. So I have no fans, likes or dislikes. But you have to wonder why they did this? What do you think?

Maybe they want to separate themselves more from twitter and "followers" (equal fans) and hollywood celebs? Or perhaps to join more in general internet connections and (do i dare say) search/link technologies like google. Is that what this is all about....is FB gearing up for some wild new search technology? It's facinating isn't it?

But the more important question and answer to me is --- are companies that are making a significant investment in FB, seeing any return? I certainly get FB for families, colleges and students, friends but I still don't get it for business. Can anyone enlighten me on this..or agree or want to defend FB so much because you can't live without it? Would love to hear your thoughts on anything I wrote above as well as links to any research papers out there that you might know about on how social networking has performed vs search marketing over the last year or so with regard to business. Thanks and have a great weekend.