Most of us who post to this blog are children of the 80s. We have witnessed the advent of the Information Age and, while our parents may have seen it coming and our children will push its limits even farther, we have had a unique vantage on history.
Maybe that is why we have taken naturally to the Long Tail, which Chris Anderson describes in his book by the same name. The Long Tail is generally depicted by a graph that compares demand and supply; in the case of commercial markets, a small number of products appeal to many people, and these blockbusters cause an initial spike on the graph. This spike is known as the head. Many more products appeal to just a few people, and demand for these products extends the graph into a tail, low and long.
According to Anderson, the era of big hits is on the decline and, in its place, niche markets will fill the void:
There’s still demand for big cultural buckets, but they’re no longer the only market. The hits now compete with an infinite number of niche markets, of any size. And consumers are increasingly favoring the one with the most choice. The era of one-size-fits-all is ending, and in its place is something new, a market of multitudes (The Long Tail, pg. 5).
Of course, the Long Tail has many applications: in the music and movie industries, on store shelves, and among political candidates, to name a few. But while the Long Tail means more choice for consumers, voters, etc., it only works if the market provides ample selection and the public seeks out options:
Demand must follow…supply. Otherwise, the Tail will whither. Because the Tail is measured not just in available variety but in the people who gravitate toward it, the true shape of demand is revealed only when consumers are offered infinite choice. It is the aggregate sales, use, or other participation of all those people in the newly available niches that turns the massive expansion of choice into an economic and cultural force. The Long Tail starts with a million niches, but it isn’t meaningful until those niches are populated with people who want them (The Long Tail, pg. 53).
In his article “What is Web 2.0? Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software,” Tim O’Reilly claims applications that tease out value from the Long Tail will survive in the future, and applications that don’t will fall by the wayside. According to O’Reilly, “You can visualize Web 2.0 as a set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles, at a varying distance from that core” (“What is Web 2.0?,” pg. 2). Moving forward, Google, blogs, wikis, and other technologies that build on themselves will lead innovation. Technologies that remain rooted in their traditional application will fail.
While it’s hard to argue with the desirability of choice, it’s worth playing devil’s advocate for a moment. What will happen as:
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Fewer moviegoers watch more films?
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Fewer listeners buy copies of more songs?
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Fewer readers pay attention to more news outlets (legitimate and not)?
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The same number of voters support more candidates?
Anderson claims that there is rich profit in the Long Tail, and that more people will reap that profit. But as production companies, record labels, and publishers adapt, will their offerings suffer? What will motivate those companies as they spend more money to create products but receive less profit? As countless politicians flock to the campaign trail, who will they represent?
Human nature is driven by the bandwagon effect. What will we root for when we have too many options to track?
And now for the Question of the Week: From iTunes to NetFlix to the blogosphere, how do you take advantage of the Long Tail?
