Facebook currently offers contextual ads to make sure relevant marketing messages find consumers - but what if there were a tool that made it simple for consumers to find brands that meet their needs?

Facebook currently offers contextual ads to make sure relevant marketing messages find consumers – but what if there were a tool that made it simple for consumers to find brands that meet their needs? The site's New Pages Discovery tool tested over the weekend came and went like a flash, but it seems to have illuminated a feature of interest to users and marketers that may inspire similar brand-finding tools down the road.

As the All Facebook blog reported over the weekend, the New Pages Discovery tool made suggestions about businesses consumers might have wanted to follow on the social network. Responses to the feature were positive. One commenter simply said, "I love it… great new tool."

The feature aimed to help brands get noticed on Facebook. It culled users' "likes" into one page and divided recommendations into industry categories within the "Discovery" browser. It seems the tool treated "likes" as links, counting each as a vote to get a brand's profile bumped up on the results pages. A revived feature could act as an SEO platform for Facebook.

Some consumers were very vocally disappointed when Facebook took down the tool. One user expressed her frustration on the All Facebook blog, claiming the New Pages Discovery tool "looked awesome." Others hope that the feature has simply been taken down so that Facebook can better prepare it to go live.

Facebook doesn't have an internal mechanism for brand discovery set up yet, so launching a perfected version of the New Pages Discovery Tool may be beneficial for maintaining interest among the site's users and advertisers. Still, the social network seems to be doing fine in terms of boosting partnering brands – Facebook reports that advertiser CM Photographs generated nearly $40,000 in sales from a $600 investment in ad space on the site.  

Katherine Griwert is Brafton's Marketing Director. She's practiced content marketing, SEO and social marketing for over five years, and her enthusiasm for new media has even deeper roots. Katherine holds a degree in American Studies from Boston College, and her writing is featured in a number of web publications.