I'm not sure what to do with this information, but I think Seth Godin is probably right in his estimation of the Long Tail theory:
A lot of people don't seem to understand a key implication of the long tail: Given the choice, it's better to make a hit. If you have a choice of cutting a top 10 record or making a track of Jamaican polka music for iTunes, go for the hit.
If you have a choice between being on page 30 of the Google results for "Bolivian sushi" or the number one match for "buy life insurance", go for the latter. No brainer.
The problem, of course, is that you don't have a choice. You can give the hit a shot, but it's awfully crowded at that end of the curve.
My question? Is the Long Tail where losers go to die? If so, is there a way to turn losing in the Short Tail into a strategy? I don't think so. I don't think there's a viable way to be "the lame alternative for those who don't want the hit." It's probably true that we have no choice but to be part of the Long Tail, but I can't see a way to decide to be second-best from the beginning.
In short, the Long Tail is a great theory, but seems to provide no concrete, strategic direction. At least it made Chris Anderson rich. It probably won't make you rich.
Remember the long tail? It was the omnipresent theory that suggested there were oodles of cash to be made by monetizing a market's disparate tastes via the Web.
Why sell a million copies of Led Zeppelin's Coda, when you can make a thriving business of selling two to three copies of your neighbor's garage band to Rick, two copies of a Nigerian band's tunes to Susan, and so on?
As new research highlighted in Harvard Business Review suggests, the answer may well be that the real money is in the blockbuster, not the long tail, after all:
Meanwhile, our research also showed that success is concentrated in ever fewer best-selling titles at the head of the distribution curve. From 2000 to 2005 the number of titles in the top 10 percent of weekly sales dropped by more than 50 percent--an increase in concentration that is common in winner-take-all markets. The importance of individual best sellers is not diminishing over time. It is growing....
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Recently I was fortunate to interview Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired and the keynote speaker for the Open Source Think Tank, coming up February 7-9 in Napa Valley, Calif. Given Chris' views, I think he's an ideal person to headline an event whose theme is "The Future of Commercial Open Source." (While attendance is by invitation only, you can still apply for admittance.)
Everyone has heard about Chris Anderson's article, book, and blog, The Long Tail. If you haven't, you don't live on this planet (not that there's anything wrong with that). Anderson's theory--that there is big opportunity in lots of little markets--resonates in a world whose technology increasingly permits, encourages, and even requires that we move beyond mass market product development to cater to individual tastes.
As Chris put it in his original Wired article:
For too long we've been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching--a market response to inefficient distribution.
Free products (or, at least, their discovery) from the physical world, however, and the economics of consumption change. Dramatically.
I spent some time talking with Chris to see how his theory applies to open source. His ideas pushed me to re-examine my own, as my thoughts on how the Long Tail would apply to open source turned out to be a bit naive...
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