No one is likely to say that there isn’t space for both websites and apps in our lives, but the question of what separates the two of them is being asked with increasing frequency. What things does the web do well that apps can only hope to emulate badly, and vice versa?

Since the advent of the iPhone, smartphones have generally favoured an app ecosystem over the web. Even those with established user-centric sites are changing tack. Witness Facebook’s new App Store, or LeapFrog, the children’s educational brand, announcing that it will close its online LeapWorld site this month to invest more resources into its app marketplace. A response, according to the brand, to customer feedback.

Are such changes due to technical innovations, the growth of the smartphone market and a fundamental change in people’s relationship with their personal technology, or are brands overlooking the mobile web at their peril?

We’ve invited a panel who have given the causes of all this change a bit more thought than most to field questions from ‘the floor’, in the first of what will be our regular online discussions.

Our panellists are NET-A-PORTER’s Group Mobile Manager Sarah Watson and shoring up the tech end of the discussion is Pascal Auberson, owner and Technical Director of Specialmoves, one of London’s premiere creative technology companies, whose recent work includes development for Kaiser Chiefs, Nokia and Smirnoff.