Chris Anderson
Author
The Long Tail

We ran The Long Tail as a featured TypePad blog on July 11, 2006.

What was the genesis of the Long Tail? Was there a specific incident, or just a gradual realization that things were changing?

In the book I tell the story of visiting Ecast, a digital jukebox company whose machines (in bars etc, like regular jukeboxes) offer a library of several tens of thousands of tracks. The CEO asked me what fraction of the top 10,000 albums sold at least one track a month. I, thinking of the 80/20 rule but realizing that digital might be different, answered "50%." The actual answer was 98%. When I, who should know this stuff, guess that wrong, there's something intersting going on. I talked to other companies, from Netflix to Rhapsody, and the 90+% figure kept coming up. No matter how much they added to their already huge inventories, which were tens or hundred of times larger than you might find in traditional retail, they found that people bought it--there was some demand for virtually everything. After I got the full data sets and plotted it out, I got the familiar powerlaw shape, and when I summed the area under the curve after the point where traidtional retail ended, I saw that this "tail" of the curve amounted to a sizeable market of its own--and there was virtually no limit in how far it could go. Thus the "The Long Tail."

You've used your TypePad blog to explore the ideas of the Long Tail. Was that your first blogging experience?

It was. Lucked out in my first try.

What made you choose TypePad?

I knew a number of people who worked there, so I had confidence that it would be best of breed. I also knew I'd be able to reach someone when things went wrong! Fortunately for my friends in management, the customer service people are even more responsive than they are, so I don't bug executives with dumb technical questions too often.

How did the research and feedback cycle work on the blog? Can you describe the process?

Broadly, I posted half-baked ideas and my smart readers helped me bake them further. I shared data, analysis, theories, and examples and got a load of feedback, between comments, trackbacks and emails. The most interesting part for me was that people found resonances that I had never thought of. Readers who were interested in clothes explained why the "crafting" movement was the "long tail of fashion" and people who were into the drinks industry explained how microbrews were the "long tail of beer."  Collectively, they helped me make the book far better than it would have been otherwise.

How do you think blogs fit into the Long Tail economy?

Well, for starters they're the long tail of media, able to focus on niche interests that would never make sense for a commercial publication. They're also the new tastemakers, introducting people to niche products and content by serving as a filter. Great bloggers can find gems out there and bring them to the attention of readers who share their interests. This is a highly amplified form of word of mouth, and it's now one of the most effective demand drivers out there.

You quote Kevin Laws saying, "The biggest money is in the smallest sales," and obviously we've seen markets such as Rhadsopy and Google Adwords bear that out. Where do things head once the Long Tail is fully accessed -- when we've achieved almost unlimited choice?

I think then we'll see the natural shape of demand in our culture, one free of the distortions of limited distribution, choice and findability. You'll still have hits, of course, but they'll be sharing the market with millions of niches. The effect, which we're already seeing, is a flatter demand curve, more evenly distributed between head and tail.

Have you noticed any unforseen benefits or drawbacks to blogging? What suprised you the most?

Constant, unrelenting guilt about not posting more often. Blogs are a beast that must be fed. Biggest surprise: how much fun it is to write in an informal, conversational voice. It's very liberating for us mainstream media guys. 

What are some of the blogs you make sure to read on a regular basis?

I only read blogs via their RSS feeds, and I publish the feeds I read at: http://www.bloglines.com/public/zlite

But some of my favorites include Marginal Revolution, an economics blog, DefenseTech, a military blog, Joystiq and John Battelle's Searchblog.

What's your next project? Will it have a blog?

This fall, once the book craziness is over, I going to turn to side project on cool techie things to do with your kids, which will be at geekdad.com. It will probably be group blog. On TypePad, of course!

The Long Tail is Chris Anderson's blog about the economic shift from "big hits" to smaller niche products and services. The Internet is changing the way companies do business and the expectations that consumers have about choice. Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, has a keen eye for spotting those changes and a deep understanding of where they will ultimately lead us. Anderson originally suggested the idea in an article in October 2004, and ever since he's kept up his lively Long Tail blog as a proving grounds for developing the ideas in the article into a full-length book. That book, of the same name, was just published by Hyperion, and is available everywhere fine visionary books are sold.

Comments

[The Zero Boss]

Very cool! A great way to mine data for a forthcoming book.

I'm using my own blog to publish a book I had rejected by over a dozen publishers, who turned it down due to my "lack of a platform" for pushing copies. Others have done similiar. We'll be seeing more projects like this in the next year, methinks.