• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, May 3, 2010

Marketers who want to build iPhone campaigns or Facebook Fan page face a quandary: they must leave behind many of the tools -- analytics, search engine optimization (SEO) and click-through rates (CTR) -- that accompany campaigns across the open Web, according to Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff .

This trend is evident in the way Apple and Facebook create proprietary platforms that prohibit search engines from indexing private content, and require brands to build campaigns with specific technologies and APIs. Among Apple's rules: Adobe Flash won't run.

Bernoff calls this "war" one of the most important trends to hit the Internet in the past five years, one that has created what he calls the "Splinternet" -- a Web where content on devices, other than PCs or hidden behind passwords, makes it difficult for site developers and marketers to create a unified experience.

If marketers and advertisers require a unified experience to support better campaigns, could open-source applications like Salmon, Open Social API, and foaf, which aim to connect communities through the fabric of the Web, provide an underpinning to unsplinter the Internet? The answers aren't apparent, but perhaps I can provide fodder for thoughts.

The Web's framework, originally based on the idea of compatible formats, should allow any computer or Internet-connected device to connect and share content, though not necessarily in similar ways, in my opinion.

But the more Bernoff talks with clients, the clearer it becomes for him that the two biggest splinters, Apple and Facebook, are at the center of the concern. "Both are building on top of the broad Web foundation with their own proprietary worlds," Bernoff explains.

To some extent, Google does that, too, but aims for a much more open Internet. Bernoff, however, tells us in a blog post that while Google has its own proprietary ID, the more splintering gains ground, the more the Mountain View, Calif., search engine stands to lose. He calls it an "epic strategic battle" between Apple, Facebook, and Google.

Splintering isn't new to the Internet, and companies will continue to build proprietary systems and technologies. Those that catch on prove shareholder value for public companies. Apple's an easy example. Private companies strive to become the dominate player to appease venture capitalists and private investors that have funded potential growth.

Standards, such as HTML5, have the potential to help. Bernoff points to HTML5 and OpenID to make these splinters irrelevant, but wonders how long it will take for these standards to gain wide adoption. "HTML5 can succeed only to the extent that it becomes a standard and that people ask for it," he says. "Open Social is another good idea, but it hasn't generated a huge amount of support and [is] not embedded in the fabric of the Internet similar to Flash or today's HTML."

Online Marketing Geek Andy Beard doesn't believe OpenID will work, but Salmon possibly could. "In theory, Salmon is being designed to help content spread," he says. "Everything Google does is aimed at making content accessible from multiple places across the Internet and multiple devices."

Beard says people shouldn't be tied to using iPhone as a device or using Google Buzz as an interface. If I'm talking to Beard in Facebook, he should be able to use Buzz as an interface.

Reliable-SEO and Dojo community Founder David Harry reminds me that forums were splintered by blogs, and blog splintered by social sites. The Salmon protocol, which Google has been working on with the open source community, aims to bring together sites and comments. He points to an interesting way to understand Salmon when more than one blog posts link together. "If you write an article and someone comments on MediaPost instead of on my blog, we'd have fractured comments," he says. "Salmon tries to bring them all together."

Salmon, Open Social API, and foaf may not provide the underlying layer to support a more open Internet, but the Internet needs one to help people access and share content across any device, anywhere. The Internet also needs a layer to help marketers and advertisers take full advantage of analytics, SEO and other tools.

Bernoff hasn't seen enough progress in standards to reunite the Internet. "The pendulum seems to have swung in the proprietary direction [more] than at any time I have seen in the past 15 years," he says.