The Long Tail

Author:

Chris Anderson

Available at:

(article originally published in October 2004 Wired Magazine, available at http://www.surferzrule.com/z_artic_wired_long_tail2.html)

Description:

(from Wikipedia article ‚ÄúLong Tail,‚Äù available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail): The phrase “The Long Tail”, as a proper noun, was first coined by Chris Anderson. Beginning in a series of speeches in early 2004 and culminating with the publication of a Wired Magazine article in October 2004, Anderson described the effects of the long tail on current and future business models. Anderson observed that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. Examples of such mega-stores include Amazon.com, Netflix and even Wikipedia. The Long Tail is a potential market and, as the examples illustrate, successfully tapping in to that long tail market is often enabled by the distribution and sales channel opportunities the Internet creates. A former Amazon employee described the Long Tail as follows: “We sold more books today that didn’t sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday.” The Long Tail has strong implications for culture and politics. Where the opportunity cost of inventory storage and distribution is high, only the most popular products are sold. But where the Long Tail kicks in, minority tastes are catered to and individuals are offered greater choice. In situations where popularity is determined by the lowest common denominator, the Long Tail will thus lead to improvement in a society’s level of culture. Television is a good example of this: TV stations have limited time slots, so the opportunity cost of each time slot is high; stations therefore choose programs that have the broadest appeal. But as the number of TV stations grows or TV programming is distributed through other digital channels, the choice of TV programs grows and the cultural level rises.