That’s the right question, imho: At what point do we stop cultivating our brands and start building the Facebook / Twitter farm?

Had Skittles been more thoughtful about its target audience (are teens using Twitter?) and the execution (might a curator be required to exclude the racist stuff, etc?), the idea might have been a huge win for Skittles. If Skittles customers are using Twitter already to talk about the brand, Skittles wins by joining the conversation, and perhaps (by aggregating the content in one place) adding value to it. Since Skittles customers are already using Twitter (theoretically), those customers already have a relationship with the Twitter brand and platform whether or not Skittles comes along.

But I’m thinking about your question in the context of, say, Facebook Connect. I’ve added it to ChasNote because it appears to be a good service for my readers — if those readers are also Facebook members, they can comment without registering with ChasNote since ChasNote accepts Facebook’s authentication. Does that mean I’m encouraging my readers to pledge their allegiance to Facebook instead of ChasNote?

The executive team at ChasNote is comfortable with that trade off. But replace ChasNote with Intel.com or Walmart.com and it might be a different story.

But search aside, I am trying to define in my own mind where the business opportunity is for building up your presence on social media sites. As someone pointed out, to the extent we put our efforts into building up social sites like Twitter and Facebook, we’re becoming “digital sharecroppers.” Great for them but how does it benefit small businesses like mine?

I can see the marketing benefits.

But where is the line between marketing and simply frittering away your own opportunities to help some twenty somethings who started Facebook or Twitter, get rich, instead of building up your own online property? Food for thought ….