The Long Tail
At some point during David Warlick’s keynote earlier today, he mentioned “the long tail”, an idea introduced by Chris Anderson in a 2004 Wired article and further developed in his 2006 book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. The Long Tail describes the long, trailing, just positive section of a graph which plots sales volume against book titles (Amazon.com) or music titles (Rhapsody.com) or movie rentals (Netflix.com).
Like traditional stores, these web stores sell or rent a lot of certain titles, the best sellers. Unlike traditional stores, they sell or rent a few copies of an enormous number of unpopular titles. They can do so because, unlike traditional stores which have limited display space (at so much cost per square foot or meter), it is cheap for them to do so — almost free. The long tail provides these businesses with a big chunk of their earnings. Because of the long tail, consumers have more choice and the items sold or rented don’t drop out of sight after a short time.
I had forgotten this part of David’s keynote until I sat down in my room this afternoon and turned on NPR. The host of All Things Considered was interviewing somebody (Chris Anderson?) on the topic of the Long Tail. Weird.
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