by Aner Ravon
It feels great to read a good book once in a while. And The Long Tail by Chris Anderson is indeed a must book for everyone involved with web 2.0. It tackles the long tail from a cultural and business perspective, creating the first high quality research I, at least, have seen about the subject. I enjoyed the analysis, but just as importantly the exact writing which was filled with finesse.
Short version - the transition from scarcity to abundance drives greater selection and personalization. The shift is responsible for ground shaking changes in the business and cultural climates. Niches become, surprisingly, a source of much greater potential then hits. Data collected from Amazon, Ebay, iTunes, Rhapsody and Google confirms. How do we classify or add to the value chain? For that you would need to read the long version.
Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired and a former senior international journalist at The Economist, not only argues that the future of culture is with selling less of more. He offers a set of practical tools. The classification to fundamental roles (producers, distributors, filters) is eye opening. So is the simple overview of our transition from pre-filters (PC Mag, for example) to post-filters (Techcrunch is the ultimate post-filter for web 2.0 applications).
The book has been praised by Guy Kawasaki but also critiqued by Lee Gomes of Wall Street Journal. Chris Anderson addresses the critical view in his popular blog, using yet another educating analysis, mathematical this time, by Andrew Odlyzko.
I have a hunch The Long Tail is underway to becoming a 101 text book.
Aner Ravon
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I think the main idea is not about hits no longer being the game. Maybe in some areas such as movies and music the easy replication is more of a factor then the market place of the long tail. Then again that’s not the main point. The main point is the actual creation of infinite choice markets at little to no cost, coupled with distribution mechanisms and filters. Together, these create markets that have not existed before. More importantly, they put together individualized sub cultures that did not exist before.
08.07.06 @ 4:53 pmI’ll be sure to read that book.
08.08.06 @ 7:37 amOK, the long tail has its advantages.
Here’s a true long tail gem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_NALyl9Sr4
[…] I received a lot of verbal feedback about my last post. Many people pointed me to rebuttals arguing that the Blockbuster hit is very much alive. An interesting recurring argument attributes the decline in record sales and box office turnout to “external” factors - the creation of eMule, iPods and DVDs, etc. As if these are not indicative of long tail economics and their drivers. […]
Pingback 08.08.06 @ 1:19 pmSalon just published a review of “the Long Tail”, surprisingly titled “Chasing Tail”. The main point of the review is that Anderson fails to address much of LT’s relevance to ordinary people (as opposed to businessman).
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/08/09/anderson/
more discussion about tail size…
Once again men are heatedly discussing tail size. Just ponder this queston: How large is the long tail? Personally, I’m going to keep looking before I decide for myself.
While it’s novel to bring mathematical precision to such matters, unfortunately…
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I haven’t read the book yet, but I do have some criticism of its main idea. Much of my criticism is shared by John Cassidy in this review.
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/060710crbo_books1
08.07.06 @ 12:08 pm