03 A Short History of the Long Tail/ 04 The Three Forces of the Long Tail

The origins of the Long Tail go back to the first giant centralized warehouses in the late nineteenth century. The first to utilize this were Sears and Roebuck and Co through the mass distribution of their “Wishbook” which acted as the first viral marketing campaign. Through their use of warehousing and a unique network of suppliers, sears beckoned the beginning of the superstore.

Just as the key to the early success of the supermarket was the shopping cart, the automobile, free parking lots, and mechanical refrigerators in the home and store, resources are key. Compared to Sears era of massive centralized warehouses that contained everything, the wave of catalogs was more about targeted niches and with color printing technology, niche retailers found a way to reach mainstream audiences by printing magazine-quality catalogs showcasing their products; but what the personal computer could do took postal shopping to the next level.

The internet provides a way of offering a catalog to everyone- with no printing and no mailing required- and it also presents a way to eliminate most of the physical barriers to unlimited selections. The unlimited shelf space of the web retail allows them to offer their customers more variety and convenience, cementing brand loyalty with current customers and extending to new customers who may or may not be near a physical store location

Our culture and economy are increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of hits (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve, and moving toward a huge number of niches in the tail. There are 6 themes to the Long Tail age:

1. there are far more niche goods than hits
2. the costs of reaching those niches is falling dramatically, allowing more variety
3. new tools and techniques, or filters, to help consumers find niches can drive the demand down the tail
4. with more variety, the demand curve flattens
5. there are so many niches that collectively they can comprise a market rivaling the hits
6. the natural shape demand is revealed through the other steps.

Anderson also sees there being three driving forces to the long tail which can be understood through the table at the top.

Chapter 11 Niche Culture
-------------------

Hitler House




Chapter 11 begins with an example addressing the expansion of the music industry: People have had enough of the bland and formulatic outputs of the music industry (and other industries founded on generics, hits). They are growing more and more interested in new, original, and never-before-seen, eclectic offerings. This concept is relevant to many other industries such as books, clothing, and other retail operations. Continuing with the music example, consider how the whole evolution of new music was facilitated by affordable technology. This detail brings us to the first step of a long tail: democratization of the tools of production. Cheap technology enables hundreds of small indie record labels to to economically market and produce records.

The spread of all this new music required distribution channels with low barriers to entry. The same applies for other retail businesses: the internet is an essential tool for the buying and selling of new, eclectic offerings. The second step to the formation of a long tail: democratized distribution. DJs can now cheaply and efficiently surf the long tail of house music in order to decide what to play in their clubs. (see story on pg 179-180). Music producers have realized that opening up their goods to being remixed and tweaked has beneficial economic consequences. The same principles apply to the spread of clothing, visual media, breaking news, etc. When many people can collectively share in the formation of just about anything, it becomes something that no one person could have done alone. Also, as people come together and share ideas, individuals learn about the infinite interests of others, thus opening their eyes to unlimited new things like music, clothing, politics, books, etc. (fragmented interests).

Abundant, cheap distribution=unlimited variety=ultimate fragmentation. The individuals are not changing, they have always been fragmented in their interests. They are now simply satisfying the fragmented interests that they’ve always had. Today our culture is a mixture of head and tail, hits and niches, institutions and individuals, professionals and amateurs.

Considering these fragmented interests of society, the chapter then outlines culture as no longer being seen as a “big blanket” but as a “superposition of many interwoven threads.” Virginia Postrel remarked that most aspects of human identity - intellect, interests, etc., probably have a normal distribution; diversity is a reflection of the population distribution. People are forming into “cultural tribes of interest,” confirming that our culture is a constantly changing entity that is grouping, breaking, joining, scattering, coming together, and wandering away from 'anything' it has ever been before.

To further demonstrate this point, Richard Posner has noted that bloggers can now reach a narrow segment of the population better than mass newspapers can; increasingly popular blogs are competing with major news organizations (see figure, page 187). People, not traditional organizations, have the control over what is considered interesting and news worthy; and the 'supply & demand' of information and products. Using the New York Times newspaper as an example, with the introduction of the internet and public blogs, “authority is in the eye of the beholder” and news and information is clearly no longer the exclusive domain of professionals. Branching out from this, individuals can pick news that fits with their already established ideological viewpoint and existing knowledge base. This trend may be the end of end of “spoon-fed orthodoxy and infallible institutions;” the internet will require and reward individual investigation. The chapter concludes by noting that human’s natural curiosity and the availability of infinite information will make us, over time, more open minded rather than less.

15.The Long Tail of Marketing

In 2006, an advertising agency developed a user contest to “make your own Chevy Tahoe commercial”. This corporate Do-It-Yourself approach - letting consumers create the dialogue and do the advertising for you, proved immensely popular. The ad campaign generated more than 30,000 user-submitted videos, though not all were positive. Many users created videos that turned the ad agency’s main objective on its head - by criticizing it as a symbol of oil consumerism, environmentally unsustainable, and part of a global oil industry that ignites conflicts throughout the world (Iraq, for example). Nonetheless, the agency did not remove these negative ads for fear of appearing to stringently dictate the terms of the message. Despite the negative user-generated content, Tahoe sales spiked.

There is no longer room for a company to release a product that they know is a bad one. Word of mouth is now, once again, the most powerful marketing tool that exists; the best tool for measuring word of mouth is quantifying the incoming links for a certain piece of media. The use of incoming links to measure media impact is superior to simply measuring audience size; the size of the audience gives no indication of what the audience thought of what they viewed, while a hyperlink indicates that not only was the media viewed but the viewer also liked it, as they are now recommending it to others.

Microsoft’s successes in connecting with their consumers can serve as a message to all online influence peddlers: Influence is found from people in the know (bloggers, programmers, etc.) not from people paid to be a source of influence (PR professionals). This direct-to-consumer transparency works offline as well, and can well serve the small-market craftspeople who sell products to people who care about the process their products go through before arriving to them.

Chapter 11 of The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson, begins with an example addressing the expansion of the music industry: People have had enough of the bland and formulatic outputs of the music industry (and other industries founded on generics, hits). They are growing more and more interested in new, original, and never-before-seen, eclectic offerings. This concept is relevant to many other industries such as books, clothing, and other retail operations. Continuing with the music example, consider how the whole evolution of new music was facilitated by affordable technology. This detail brings us to the first step of a long tail: democratization of the tools of production. Cheap technology enables hundreds of small indie record labels to to economically market and produce records.

The spread of all this new music required distribution channels with low barriers to entry. The same applies for other retail businesses: the internet is an essential tool for the buying and selling of new, eclectic offerings. The second step to the formation of a long tail: democratized distribution. DJs can now cheaply and efficiently surf the long tail of house music in order to decide what to play in their clubs. (see story on pg 179-180). Music producers have realized that opening up their goods to being remixed and tweaked has beneficial economic consequences. The same principles apply to the spread of clothing, visual media, breaking news, etc. When many people can collectively share in the formation of just about anything, it becomes something that no one person could have done alone. Also, as people come together and share ideas, individuals learn about the infinite interests of others, thus opening their eyes to unlimited new things like music, clothing, politics, books, etc. (fragmented interests).
Abundant, cheap distribution=unlimited variety=ultimate fragmentation. The individuals are not changing, they have always been fragmented in their interests. They are now simply satisfying the fragmented interests that they’ve always had. Today our culture is a mixture of head and tail, hits and niches, institutions and individuals, professionals and amateurs.


Considering these fragmented interests of society, the chapter then outlines culture as no longer being seen as a “big blanket” but as a “superposition of many interwoven threads.” Virginia Postrel remarked that most aspects of human identity - intellect, interests, etc., probably have a normal distribution; diversity is a reflection of the population distribution. People are forming into “cultural tribes of interest,” confirming that our culture is a constantly changing entity that is grouping, breaking, joining, scattering, coming together, and wandering away from 'anything' it has ever been before.


To further demonstrate this point, Richard Posner has noted that bloggers can now reach a narrow segment of the population better than mass newspapers can; increasingly popular blogs are competing with major news organizations (see figure, page 187). People, not traditional organizations, have the control over what is considered interesting and news worthy; and the 'supply & demand' of information and products. Using the New York Times newspaper as an example, with the introduction of the internet and public blogs, “authority is in the eye of the beholder” and news and information is clearly no longer the exclusive domain of professionals. Branching out from this, individuals can pick news that fits with their already established ideological viewpoint and existing knowledge base. This trend may be the end of end of “spoon-fed orthodoxy and infallible institutions;” the internet will require and reward individual investigation. The chapter concludes by noting that human’s natural curiosity and the availability of infinite information will make us, over time, more open minded rather than less.

05 Personal Motivation Meets Collaborative Production

One of the most famous examples of distributed collaboration today is Wikipedia. Wiki is a way in which experts and amateurs can collaborate on their subjects of interest, while their commitment, along with the intrinsic satisfaction they receive for their involvement, allows for cooperative participation through editing other user’s input. Wikipedia articles do not require someone to be an expert to be a contributor. This is the principal advantage of wiki articles’ active growth in terms of numbers and content improvement.

However, collaborative systems such as Wikipedia cannot be understood by focusing on the “average user”, since such a user does not exist (think power law distribution). Instead, the wiki effort can be better understood as collective action. We see this in the recent and ongoing Arab uprisings. While a small group of individuals may account for a disproportionate number of posts (calls to action, facebook groups, march dates, etc..), there is collaboration across the spectrum, and this has led to profound social change in many countries.

The success of Wikipedia does not necessarily rely upon user cohesion, instead it is dependent upon users who are motivated enough to contribute to various wiki content they feel needs to be improved. In short, Wikipedia exists because its users are interested, as well as motivated, to improve upon articles they care about.

We Feel Fine

Hey This is a really cool site that has gathers and codes emotions of people. You can look up statements people post on this site based off of how they are feeling. You can categorize these statements by emotion, gender, age, year, and even the exact day! Here is the site: www.wefeelfine.org

04 Publish then Filter

Advances in technology have allowed corporate broadcast media and personal communication media to share a common medium, which as a result begins to overlap as both amateurs and professionals have the ability to publish material.

Communication in the modern day has openly challenged the separation of media as an outlet of information and broadcasting. It is now possible for anyone in the world to become a broadcaster of information from gossip to a few friends, to inside information on global events. Because of this, the notions of audience and broadcaster have become increasingly intertwined. However the evolution of this form of communication was originally intended for small groups to be able to communicate with each other. Wide audience communication was a by-product of small-cluster communication, which has also challenged conventional notions of fame. However because the famous always have such a wide audience, these individuals are able to keep their status and societal notions of fame are kept intact.

The expanding world of social media has allowed for broadcasting and communication to be utilized in conjunction with one another, and its heavy reliance on user input has created an online medium for “user-generated content.”

Personal communication and publishing, once separate functions, now shade into one another. When people talk about user-generated content, they are describing ways that users create and share media, with no professionals involved. Most user generated content is created as communication in small groups. But because of its popularity people have now began publishing for wider audiences and these larger groups can judge the value of the publishing and the publisher by a process called filtering. Filtering allows users to separate the "good" content from the "bad" content. People enjoy this filtering process because no longer do people have to rely solely on the publisher's judgement regarding the quality of a post.