Book Report: The Long Tail

The future of busi­ness is sell­ing less of more. This accord­ing to Chris Ander­son, author of The Long Tail. Ander­son looks at why the future of com­merce and cul­ture isn’t in hits, the high-volume head of a tra­di­tional demand curve (and what is still dri­ving the motion-picture and music indus­tries). He makes the case that the future is now in what used to be regarded as misses– the “long tail” of the same demand curve.

Rise and Fall of the Hit

Remem­ber when Brit­ney Spears was known as a pop artist rather than a freak show? The com­mer­cial suc­cess of teen pop hits like Spears is best demon­strated by the group NSYNC. On March 21, 2000, Jive Records released NSYNC’s lat­est album No Strings Attached. The album sold 2.4 mil­lion copies in its first week… 11 mil­lion by the end of the year.

Ander­son argues that this will never hap­pen again. So what hap­pened to the hit parade? The indus­try blamed piracy. Ander­son states it was choice. Not only were users able to down­load music freely on such ser­vices as Nap­ster and Limewire, but they were given unprece­dented choice in what music they down­loaded. Today’s iTunes model uses this same choice to cre­ate a legal sys­tem for access­ing mil­lions of tracks, from the hits to the obscure.

So what’s the take home here? If you don’t have the resources to cre­ate a big hit social net­work like Face­book or Net­flix, don’t worry. With the right niche and the abil­ity to offer infi­nite con­tent within that niche, you can build a strong brand by sup­port­ing and encour­ag­ing the right users. What’s more, with tech­nol­ogy advanc­ing to a point where any­one can be a media pro­ducer, you can offer it faster than any of the hits could hope to.

Niche Cul­ture

Amer­i­can polit­i­cal and cul­tural writer Vir­ginia Postrel observed that the pop­u­lar­ity of niche is noth­ing more than a reflec­tion of the diver­sity inher­ent in any pop­u­la­tion distribution:

“Every aspect of human iden­tity, from size, shape, and color to sex­ual pro­cliv­i­ties and intel­lec­tual gifts, comes in a wide range. Most of us clus­ter some­where in the mid­dle of most sta­tis­ti­cal dis­tri­b­u­tions. But there are lots of bell curves, and pretty much every­one is on the tail of at least one of them.”

Ander­son observes peo­ple reform­ing into thou­sands of what he calls tribes of inter­est, con­nected less by geo­graphic prox­im­ity and work­place chat­ter than by shared inter­ests. You can find the niche for your social net­work by hav­ing a tightly defined pur­pose and audi­ence.

Long Tail Rules

The book is well sum­ma­rized by the last chap­ter, where Ander­son states the secret to cre­at­ing a thriv­ing Long Tail social net­work as

1. Make every­thing available
2. Help me find it

Seems sim­ple enough. The first part can be a chal­lenge, as copy­right may be an issue, as well as dig­i­tiz­ing some con­tent. But with the cost of stor­age and band­width decreas­ing rapidly, it will con­tinue to get eas­ier to offer every­thing within a niche.

The sec­ond point is mov­ing quickly with the rise of pow­er­ful search engines act­ing like fil­ters. Pro­gram­ming an effec­tive search fea­ture on your social net­work, as well as per­form­ing appro­pri­ate search engine opti­miza­tion, will drive traf­fic down the long tail and to your net­work. Remem­ber– the power of the rec­om­men­da­tion trumps all, so be sure to include some type of rat­ings sys­tem within your website.

Over­all, The Long Tail was a quick read, well worth a trip to your local library. If you are short on time, you may con­sider check­ing out this book for the last chap­ter alone. Anderson’s nine long tail rules are crit­i­cal for any social net­work being considered.