The Long Tail

As with everything I find on the Net, by the time I come across it I feel like I've missed so much. As is the case with "The Long Tail".

Last year a guy named Chris Anderson wrote an article in Wired Magazine about a concept known as "The Long Tail", this concept hit home with content owners everywhere. Chris now maintains a blog on The Long Tail which is a great source for up to date info.

I'll paraphase for the sake of this post, but the best thing to do if you're interested is to read the wired article first and then keep an eye out for it - It's everywhere nowadays. The Long Tail looks like this:

The basic premise of the Long Tail is that the market of niches is larger than the mass market content. Take music downloads for instance, the top 10,000 songs make up less market share than all songs outside the top 10,000. This is very compelling concept that is only possible online. With no distribution or warehousing costs (to speak of) virtually all content can be made available and if there is an audience for that content it can be sold to at a profit. Applying this thinking to types of content really opens the door to the future and where a new opportunity lies.

I've got lots of thoughts around this and plan to post them in the coming weeks. I know my blogging has slowed to a crawl lately - work is a busy place these days - but I'm committed to the 5 people that read this blog. So stay tuned!