(image) The Signal San Francisco conference is less than a week away, so I thought I’d take the time to explain my reasoning for the theme, and offer a curtain raiser of sorts on the day-long program. (PS, I have ten, and only ten, half price tickets available. Hit this link, and use the code “luckyday.”)
The theme, a portion of which is the title of this post, is “The Yin and Yang of Audience, Platforms and the Independent Web.” I do get a few eyes a-rollin’ when I frame conference themes, but hey, I can only do what I know how to do. I actually think pretty hard about this stuff, and like to take the time to outline the ideas behind the program.
So here goes. As readers know, I’ve been thinking out loud a lot about the future of the Internet, and whether the rise of “walled gardens” like Facebook and Apple’s iOS (what I call AppWorld) are ultimately the future the web. My short answer is yes….and. By that I mean that the Internet, which began as an open, gatekeeper-free platform where anyone could hang a shingle, will ultimately interconnect with these walled gardens – there’s just too much value in what I call the “ecosystem approach” for the opposite to occur. I framed two major forces driving the Internet today: The independent web (sites unaffiliated with major platforms like Google or Facebook), and the dependent web (major platforms which create a valuable “logged in” experience that changes “depending” on who you are.).
It’s our thesis that these two forces are “interdependent:” Each depends on the other. Hence the theme.
Wikipedia defines “Yin Yang” this way:
“Yin and yang” is used to describe how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. Opposites thus only exist in relation to each other.
At Signal SF, we have an extraordinary lineup of speakers from both the platform world (LinkedIn, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft) as well as from independent publishers and service providers (Federated Media, Girl’s Gone Child, Automattic, Lijit). And of course, we have the marketers and agencies responsible for bringing these worlds together in service of their brands (Levi Strauss, AKQA, Quantcast, Intel, Neilsen). Not to mention some really interesting startups like Instagram, One King’s Lane, PinWheel, TasteMakerX, ShareThis, and MarketShare.
In today’s marketing world, brands need to take an integrated approach to digital marketing – connecting both the passion, federated scale, and community of the independent web with the power of major dependent web services like Facebook, Google, and others. (It’s why I chose the image above for this post – put your roots in the independent web, and let your voice be heard and circulate throughout the whole Internet…)
It promises to be an engaging and smart discussion, and I hope you’ll join us for it. You can register here, or, if you’re an FM partner, email me (jbat at federatedmedia dot net), and I’ll make sure to swing you a pass. See you there!