
Study Refutes the "Long Tail" Theory - timr
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121493784638920147.html
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davidw
> "The Long Tail" seems to have followed the template of many Wired articles:
> take a partly true, modestly interesting, tech-friendly idea and puff it up
> to Second Coming proportions.

That template is true for many business books, which is why sites like my own
Squeezed Books, and others exist: it's easy to extract the meaningful bits.

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jackchristopher
I don't mean to go off topic, but thank you, that's a great site.

Too many books are like padded out Wikipedia entries.

Its great when people on HN, distill a post to its essentials.

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jraines
Let's review. The long tail exists because links and traffic on the web
(roughly approximating attention/buying intent/market size) follow a power
law.

So of course there are still going to be hits that seem to be "winner take
all"; if it weren't for the "fat head", we wouldn't need to talk about the
long tail.

The long tail becomes important in the age of the web because it's more
accessible. Just because it's accessible doesn't mean it is going to make you
rich -- but it's more possible than it was before the web.

You really don't have to look very hard to find business that could not exist
without the web. So the long tail as a "theory" is almost self-evident.

So, I just don't understand what there is to refute or debunk.

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Goronmon
_So, I just don't understand what there is to refute or debunk._

What the study is trying to debunk is that publishers/etc should cut down on
their focus on the blockbuster hits and focus more on the "long tail" titles.
From what the study is showing, doing the exact opposite may be the way to go.

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jraines
Fair enough. However, it seems obvious that if you're _capable_ of big hits,
that's what you should be going for. But if, for example, your only
competitive advantage is the acuteness of your awareness that big-footed women
have trouble finding heels, then the Long Tail is your friend.

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coglethorpe
I listened to the audiobook of "The Long Tail" and maybe I misunderstood it. I
thought it was showing how the internet can lead to better choices for
consumers and give an outlet for niche content creators to sell their wares.
In my mind it's done both. If it acts as a rising tide, lifting the fortunes
of the head as well as the tail, all the better.

There are big winners among sites, like YouTube, but there also are niche
winners like TechCrunch which has done very well against big media companies
by finding its niche. Not to mention places like Hacker News which I visit far
more often then TechCrunch and YouTube combined.

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mattmaroon
Chris Anderson's own blog has a post more or less debunking his own theory.

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dgreensp
The article uses YouTube as an example of a new "cultural category" that has
nevertheless settled into the old "winner-take-all dynamic". What??

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cwp
Yeah, that's a bit bizarre. YouTube is a great example of the long tail in
action. Instead of considering YouTube a hit compared to the rest of the web,
consider its content. If I post a video of me and my friends goofing off at
the beach, only a handful of people will watch it. But there are a ton of
those "niche" videos available on YouTube. That's the long tail, and YouTube
is successful precisely because it exploits the long tail of video.

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Anon84
> That's the long tail, and YouTube is successful precisely because it
> exploits the long tail of video.

Considering how much money they lose everyday, I would argue that's why they
are not successful (without the all mighty Google to pay the bills, of
course).

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giles_bowkett
Intellectual laziness.

Study _disputes_ Long Tail theory.

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KevBurnsJr
Long Tail = Bubble ?

