Should I send customers to Facebook or my own branded community?

As the social media manager at Shark, I'm starting to realize that people don’t just use social networks - they use us - or at least they want to. When I fool around on Facebook or Twitter, I am adding value to their network. Facebook serves up ads and Twitter is still searching for a way to provide some kind of revenue model. Funny thing is, the ads aren’t selling on the major platforms. It seems that the experience is different from search where the ad click-thru is much much more productive. But the whole thing has gotten me more concerned with the idea of just putting up Facebook pages and leaving potential customers in their hands. So, migrating them into private, branded networks, where we control the links, the look and feel, the ads - everything looks more like the future to me. Alex. Check it out, it's in development.