As a Facebook Page owner it has always been slightly annoying that you cannot message someone as your Page rather than as yourself.  For instance you may have had to delete a post and want to explain why or you may want to thank someone for their contributions to the Page.  To do this however you'd have to message them as yourself.

Seems that is all about to change however.  For Facebook has confirmed this week that it's testing a new feature that will allow Page owners to do just that.

This will be a long overdue moderation tool for Pages.  Early news suggests that Page owners will have the ability to turn on Private Messages for Pages or not.

Of course the feature would work both ways as well and would allow your fans to get in touch with you (the Page) privately.  Whilst this would stop any such interactions appearing on the public Wall this is a nice feature because it will surely provide an avenue for just the kind of messages this kind of tool is designed for.

It does appear however that the feature will place power in the hands of users rather than Pages.  For instance communication can only be reactive.  Page owners can only message people that have contributed to a Wall post, which is great for making your moderating more personal, but it won't let you contact your fans for things like marketing messages.

Overall though this will be a nice addition to the Page owners toolkit.