I am currently at the eMarketing Conference (#eMSF if you’re on Twitter) at the Hilton Financial District in San Francisco. Here are a few tidbits:

Roger Neal from BusinessWeek.com talked about the slow transformation of BusinessWeek, and how they are moving towards digital. There’s a lot of skepticism around the future of print and traditional publications and how they can survive while competing with online content. They get lots of visitors and traffic, but the reality is that the traditional ad market is changing. How will they be able to boost their revenue when only 20% of their revenue comes from online (where most of their readers are, looking at free content)?

Jeremiah Owyang is talking about his research on the future of the social web. He says that social networks are becoming more like operating systems – like LinkedIn’s app framework. Now he’s talking about social colonization, where no matter where you go, your friends go with you (if you want). New technologies will allow any website to be social. Social networks will cut into traditional email by centralizing all activity on the open web. Traditional brand marketing will wane, and marketers will have to focus on social recommendations. Favorite quote: Registration pages should go away.