2. The Long Tail: Introduction
What is the Long Tail?
The long tail is the colloquial name for a long-known feature
of statistical distributions (Zipf, Power laws,
Pareto distributions and/or general Lévy distributions ). The
feature is also known as "heavy tails," "power-law tails," or
"Pareto tails."
3. The Long Tail: Introduction
A brief history of the hit
New Technologies in the mid- to late 19th century laid the
ground work for pop culture
Commercial printing technology
“Wet plate” technique for photography
1877 – Edison invents the phonograph
Result: the first wave of pop culture
Newspapers and magazines
Novels
Printed sheet music
Records
Children’s books
Newspapers bring the latest fashions from New York,
London and Paris
At the end of the 19th century, the moving picture gave the
stars of stage a way to play many towns simultaneously and
reach a much wider audience.
Source: Anderson, C. (2006) “The Rise and Fall of the Hit”, Wired Magazine
4. The Long Tail: Introduction
A brief history of the hit
(continued)
Such potent carriers of culture had the
effect of linking people across time and
space, effectively synchronizing society.
Not only did your neighbors read the same
news you read in the morning and know
the same music and movies, people across
the country did too.
In other words, while culture was
synchronized, it was also homogenized.
Source: Anderson, C. (2006) “The Rise and Fall of the Hit”, Wired Magazine
5. The Long Tail: Introduction
Measuring the hit
Blockbuster movies
Billboard magazine Hot 100 songs
New York Times bestsellers in books
Forbes lists
6. The Long Tail: Introduction
Driver of the hit culture:
the economics of scarcity
An average movie theater needs at least
1,500 people over a 2-week run; that's the
rent for a screen.
An average record store needs to sell at
least 2 copies of a CD per year; that's the
rent for a half inch of shelf space.
The same applies to DVD rental shops,
videogame stores, booksellers, and
newsstands.
Source: Anderson, C. (2004) “The Long Tail”, Wired Magazine
7. The Long Tail: Introduction
Example: Cinema
In 2004, nearly 6,000 movies were
submitted to the Sundance Film
Festival.
255 were accepted.
24 were picked up for distribution.
The other 231 may never be seen.
Who controls the tools of production
and distribution???
Source: Anderson, C. (2004) “The Long Tail”, Wired Magazine
8. The Long Tail: Introduction
The peak of the hit culture
Between 1990 and 2000, album sales
had doubled, the fastest growth rate
in the history of the industry.
Half of the top-grossing 100 albums
ever were sold during that decade.
Source: Anderson, C. (2006) “The Rise and Fall of the Hit”, Wired Magazine
9. The Long Tail: Introduction
Decline of the hit
Total music sales fell during 2000, for
only the second time in a decade.
Sales fell 2.5 percent in 2001, 6.8
percent in 2002, and just kept
dropping.
By the end of 2005 (down another
8.3 percent), album sales in the US
had declined 20 percent from their
1999 peak.
Source: Anderson, C. (2006) “The Rise and Fall of the Hit”, Wired Magazine
10. The Long Tail: Introduction
Not enough blockbusters
Source: BoxOfficeMojo.com as posted 17/09/2006 on
the Long Tail blog
11. The Long Tail: The Long Tail and the Internet
What happened? The Internet
Record labels blame it on Napster and
piracy, but it’s not that simple.
The Internet’s peer-to-peer architecture is
optimized for a symmetrical traffic load,
with as many senders as receivers and data
transmissions spread out over geography
and time.
In other words, it’s the opposite of
broadcast.
Source: Anderson, C. (2006) “The Rise and Fall of the Hit”, Wired Magazine
12. The Long Tail: The Long Tail and the Internet
Inventories: physical retail vs. Internet
retail
Total Inventory (songs) Total Inventory (books)
735,000 2,300,000
Total Inventory (movies)
39,000 130,000
25,000
Rhapsody Walmart Amazon Barnes & Noble
3,000
Netflix Blockbuster
Source: Anderson, C. (2006) “The Long Tail: Why the Future
of Business is Selling Less of More”
13. The Long Tail: The Long Tail and the Internet
Sales distribution: Head vs. Tail
Rhapsody Amazon
% Sales from Long Tail % Sales from Long Tail
22%
43%
57%
78% Netflix
% Sales from Long Tail
20%
80%
Source: Anderson, C. (2006) “The Long Tail: Why the Future
of Business is Selling Less of More”
14. The Long Tail: The Long Tail and the Internet
Range of Quality/Satisfaction
Search quality
High
Low
Source: Anderson, C. (2006) “The Long Tail: Why the Future
of Business is Selling Less of More”
15. The Long Tail: Three Forces
The Three Forces of the Long Tail
The Three Forces of the Long Tail
Six Themes
Force 1: Democratize the tools of
production
Force 2: Democratize the tools of
distribution
Force 3: Connect supply and demand
16. The Long Tail: Three Forces: Tools of Production
Force 1: Democratize the tools of
production
Especially using affordable digital
technology that makes it
economically feasible to make
products, even in small quantities.
This results in “more stuff, which
lengthens the Tail”.
Source: Anderson, C. (2006) “The Long Tail: Why the Future
of Business is Selling Less of More”
17. The Long Tail: Three Forces: Tools of Production
Examples of tools of production
Blogs – short for Weblog - free technology
for creating an online journal to comment
on topics like food, politics, technology or
any other topic you can think of.
Photoblog – driven by cheap digital photography
Vlog – driven by cheap video recording
technology
Podcast – driven by cheap audio and video
recording technology
Example: Affiliate Blog by Shawn Collins
Open Source software.
e.g. Linux, Joomla, Simple Machines Forum
18. The Long Tail: Three Forces: Tools of Distribution
Force 2: Democratize the tools of
distribution
Internet aggregators create “infinite
shelf space” businesses where
virtually every product in a category
can be economically accessed.
This creates “more access to niches,
which fattens the Tail”.
Source: Anderson, C. (2006) “The Long Tail: Why the Future
of Business is Selling Less of More”
19. The Long Tail: Three Forces: Tools of Distribution
Examples of tools of distribution
Amazon
NetFlix
Rhapsody
iTunes
But also: If you build it, they will come
Froogle
MySpace
YouTube
Flickr
20. The Long Tail: Three Forces: Tools of Distribution
Examples of tools of distribution
Youtube – upload amateur videos.
Driver: cheap video recording technology
MySpace – social networking site
focused on entertainment.
Driver: cheap audio and video recording
technology, dynamic user interfaces
Wikipedia – Internet encyclopedia
that allows users to freely edit its
content.
21. The Long Tail: Three Forces: Connect Supply and Demand
Force 3: Connect supply and demand
Emergence of businesses and taste
makers that act as filters, helping to
cost-effectively and flexibly connect
people with available goods, no
matter how narrow the interest or
specialized the product.
This “drives business from hits to
niches”.
Source: Anderson, C. (2006) “The Long Tail: Why the Future
of Business is Selling Less of More”
22. The Long Tail: Three Forces: Connect Supply and Demand
Examples of filters
Search engines (Google, Yahoo!, etc.)
Sorting (e.g. Froogle)
Ratings (e.g. Ciao)
Reviews/Editor Recommendations (e.g.
Zdnet)
Peer recommendations (e.g. digg)
Customer Reviews (TripAdvisor.com)
Community (e.g. The Lonely Planet Forum)
RSS content syndication (e.g. NetVibes)
Tagging
24. The Long Tail: The Paradox of Choice
The Paradox of Choice
The Paradox of Choice Video
25. The Long Tail: The Paradox of Choice
Questions
Are you a maximizer or satisficer?
Provide 3 examples where filters
work & individual choice succeeds
Name 3 examples where we should
not make our own choices