The Long Tail

Ever since hearing Harry talk about The Long Tail at an architect conference and seeing articles like Architecture Strategies for Catching the Long Tailhit the scenes, I’ve been curious…

So I bought the bookand devoured it.

I usually don’t get into bookson economics but I had so many ah-ha moments with this one, I wanted to share. Great insight into how the Google’s of the world are changing business. The basic premise is that while most businesses (especially the entertainment sector) focus on “hit” products, there is an equally substantial amount of potential revenue in catering to the plethora of “niches” out there (think Google, Netflix, iTunes, eBay, SalesForce.com, etc). As the author puts it, the two basic rules of a Long Tail business are:

Aggregation is the key, but aggregation alone isn’t enough with powerful search and ways to navigate the masses of information that cater to my special interests. In terms of software, Microsoft is at the top of The Short Head but they’re desperately trying to make their way down the tail.

The author, Chris Anderson (editor of Wired), keeps up an interesting blog here.