The Long Tail : mass mkt to niche nation
The Long Tail (TLT) : About 1/2 way down the webpage is a definition/description
longtail.typepad.com
....The notion of two markets--The Head and The Long Tail; one familiar, the other long ignored but now emerging--is at the core of the thesis and explains the initial-caps TLT construction .... Long tails are not new; The Long Tail (TLT) is....
a Long Tail definition :
..."Last fall, Wired magazine identified a trend it dubbed "the long tail," and the term has since caught fire in tech and media circles. Basically, it says that in an era of almost limitless choice, many consumers will gravitate toward the most popular mass-market items, but just as many will move toward items that only a few, niche-market people want."....
Google, Schmidt, TLT mkt:
...At Google's first shareholder's meeting last week, Eric Schmidt, its CEO, elaborated on why he describes Google's mission as "serving the long tail."...
May 5th 2005 : Profiting from obscurity ---
What the “long tail” means for the economics of e-commerce --- From mass market to niche nation---
From The Economist print edition
economist.com
..."DISRUPTIVE technologies, learning curves, tipping points—every so often a trendy new term enters the business lexicon and becomes a staple of business plans, conference speeches and PowerPoint presentations. The latest example, generating buzz among entrepreneurs, technologists and bloggers, is the idea of the “long tail”. The term is not new,"...
... the idea is now in vogue because of its particular relevance to the economics of e-commerce...
...So when people invoke the long tail, what do they mean?
The short answer is a shift from mass markets to niche markets, as electronic commerce aggregates and makes profitable what were previously unprofitable transactions....
...Anderson's point is that the collective demand for obscure items is very large, is growing, and can be aggregated over the internet, ...
...number of intriguing implications. For one thing, opening up those previously uneconomic niche markets should increase overall demand: as people are better able to explore niches, they are more likely to find things they like, and may well consume more of them. This will then shift some demand, at least, away from hits. ....
...But how can people find content they want when it is buried far down the tail? Already, a number of mechanisms have emerged, based around user recommendations. Perhaps the best known is “collaborative filtering”, ...
...A long tail without good filters is just noise...providing filters to help people find what they want is vital....
The phrase The Long Tail (as a proper noun with capitalized letters) was first coined by Chris Anderson in a 2004 Wired Magazine article to describe certain business and economic models such as Amazon.com or Netflix. The term long tail is also generally used in statistics, often applied in relation to wealth distributions or vocabulary use.
en.wikipedia.org
Oct 2004: The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream. wired.com |
