The Long Tail goes further…
In the next section of The Long Tail that I read for this week, Chris Anderson goes even deeper into the theory behind his idea, as well as the implications of it shown by several examples of how it applies to real places as well as cyberspaces.
In chapter four, he outlines the three forces of the long tail as: 1) Democratizing the tools of production, 2) cutting the costs of consumption by democratizing distribution, and 3) connecting supply and demand. What these essentially mean is that as the producers make it easier to contribute to the production of media, and the websites make it all available in one place, and the recommendation lists help the consumer to decide what is good and what is bad, the long tail makes its full effect known. He also outlines six themes of the long tail age: 1) there are far more niche goods than hits, 2) the costs of reaching those niches is now falling dramatically, 3) filters can drive demand down the tail, 4) once there’s sorted variety, the demand curve flattens, 5) there are so many niche products that collectively can comprise a market rivaling the hits, and 6) the result is the natural shape of demand is revealed.
The next chapters provides clear examples of how the power of many people working together can be related to the long tail. He begins with the ways in which amateurs are now interconnecting with professionals. The story of the amateur astronomer that was able to see the first supernova witnessed by the naked eye in almost four centuries shows how not only is it up to the professionals to do the work, now amateurs can do just as important stuff. He explains this as a key moment in the arrival of a Pro-Am era, essentially meaning that the pros are working together with the amateurs in collaboration. Next, to show how this works for the average person, is the example of Wikipedia. In this area, where anyone can edit the information, creates the largest encyclopedia in human history. It is here where the average college student, such as myself, can collaborate on editing an article about any topic, and perhaps even teaching each other something in the process. This is the long tail of knowledge, where not only is it the scholars that are able to share the information they know with others, now even I can.
The sixth chapter begins to show examples of the aggregators that are making the long tail possible. Those that he foccuses on fall into five categories. 1)Physical goods, 2)digital goods, 3)advertising and services, 4) information, and 5) communities and user-generated content. The ways in which the long tail applies to this realm is that space is no longer as important as it once was. For a small store, it was only possible to stock so much product, but with the rise of Internet music stores, now it is just bytes waiting to be downloaded, with far less space needed for the software than would have previously been necessary. This is where the long tail will continue to grow. I can go onto eMusic, or iTunes and download an album that years ago I would have spent weeks trying to find or special order through a local music store. Not only that, but if I want to buy the physical product instead of the digital product, eBay or Amazon will most likely have it in stock. This is an exciting development. I cannot imagine how it would be today without these access points.
