BretWagner.com

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.

One of my favorite reads this fall is Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind. Besides being an excel­lent read on design and devel­op­ing your cre­ative side, it is a quick read well worth your time. I read it through once, then skimmed it again look­ing for ideas to incor­po­rate into my weekly rou­tine– things like keep­ing a design note­book, read­ing my wife’s Real Sim­ple mag­a­zine, and check­ing out var­i­ous right-brain games on the Internet.

Daniel Pink’s ele­va­tor speech…

The future belongs to the per­son with a very dif­fer­ent kind of mind– one that empha­sizes cre­ation over rep­e­ti­tion, rec­og­niz­ing and draw­ing mean­ing from pat­terns rather than merely fol­low­ing them. While the log­i­cal, left-brain abil­i­ties will con­tinue to be nec­es­sary for suc­cess in one’s career, they are no longer suf­fi­cient. When choos­ing a career path, one must con­sider the fol­low­ing questions:

1. Can some­one over­seas do it cheaper?
2. Can a com­puter do it faster?
3. Am I offer­ing some­thing that sat­is­fies thenon mate­r­ial, tran­scen­dent desires of an abun­dant age?

Abun­dance, Asia and Automation…

These three fac­tors are chang­ing the world in which Amer­i­cans live. For exam­ple, take abun­dance. Self-storage is a bil­lion dol­lar busi­ness and promises to only grow into the future. Think there were self-storage facil­i­ties in the Great Depression?

Asia is chang­ing the face of the work­force because of the inex­pen­sive, well-trained labor wait­ing to draw repet­i­tive and pro­gram­matic jobs in India and China. Rou­tine func­tions and pro­gram­ming have been turned over to com­put­ers and robots. Indeed, much of the work per­formed by doc­tors are fol­low­ing deci­sions trees when diag­nos­ing patients, some­thing slowly be turned over to the likes of the web­sites Web MD and some 23,000 other med-related sites.

Pink’s Six Senses…
The book does a great job dis­cussing each of Pink’s sug­gested senses– design, story, sym­phony, empa­thy, play, mean­ing– then list­ing ideas in his port­fo­lio sec­tion where you can develop each of these skills in your own life.

(1) Design. Pink brings up an impor­tant point in this sec­tion… we all start out in child­hood as design­ers. We are not afraid to make mis­takes and fol­low wher­ever our imag­i­na­tion takes us. It is through the often­times mind-numbing expe­ri­ence that is high school and col­lege that we lose this ini­tial courage to design. Says Pink– “Design is a high-concept apti­tude that is dif­fi­cult to out­source or auto­mate. Some of my favorite sug­ges­tions to grow your design apti­tude– visit a design museum (Pink lists 10) and check­ing out open houses for design ideas and elements.

(2) Story. There’s a rea­son why you can remem­ber the sto­ries your grandpa would tell around the fire­place 20 years prior but have trou­ble remem­ber­ing your combo to the lock at the gym. Our minds are wired to make as many con­nec­tions as pos­si­ble, and sto­ries fit much bet­ter with this model that rote mem­o­riza­tion. But while remem­ber­ing sto­ries may be every person’s forte, telling them is a bit trick­ier. So how do you develop this skill? Pink sug­gests writ­ing a mini-saga of your life, whip­ping out a tape recorder and inter­view­ing a rel­a­tive or friends, and turn­ing your cell­phone into the story teller by snap­ping a pic­ture story of your day (I plan on devel­op­ing this one into a post in the near future). Story is impor­tant with social net­work­ing (have you heard how Face­book got started ?!?!)

(3) Sym­phony. This could be one of the most under­rated skills on this list. Pink calls sym­phony an “essen­tial apti­tude” for a grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of work­ers. While entre­pre­neurs and inven­tors have tra­di­tion­ally done a good job at incor­po­rat­ing this into new ven­tures, those who want to stay ahead must see sym­phony for what it is– devel­op­ing rela­tion­ships. Some advice– keep a metaphor log (and read this book) and prac­tice good brain­storm­ing habits. That is:

• Go for quantity.
• Encour­age wild ideas.
• Be visual.
• Defer judg­ment.
• Take one con­ver­sa­tion at a time.

(4) Empa­thy. Many of us can boost our pow­ers of empa­thy. Doctor’s are tak­ing class to help put them­selves in the posi­tion of the patient, lawyers are try­ing to warm up to their clients (hard to believe, huh?) and yes, women still take the cake when it comes to empa­thy. So how can men get a leg up on their com­pe­ti­tion. Vol­un­teer at a local char­ity and eaves­drop at the local cof­fee shop.

(5) Play. Hap­pi­ness is an excel­lent stim­u­lus for the brain. Amer­i­cans have seen a shift in the work­place from a rigid place where busi­ness does not get mixed with plea­sure, to one where, work and play are inter­twined to cre­ate a more invig­o­rat­ing envi­ron­ment where work­ers are happy and yes, more effec­tive in their jobs. Look at Google as a shin­ing exam­ple. Employ­ees enjoy mid-afternoon sand vol­ley­ball, ping pong, and video games, and still man­age to con­tinue to take over the world. Look for a laugh­ter club near you to stim­u­late your brain with the fun stuff.

(6) Mean­ing. Aren’t we all look­ing for mean­ing? Vik­tor Frankl went look­ing for mean­ing while impris­oned in a Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camp and devel­oped his the­ory of logother­apy– an influ­en­tial move­ment in psy­chother­apy. Mar­shalling the ele­ments of hap­pi­ness and spir­i­tu­al­ity may even­tu­ally help find that mean­ing, but these books could help you get there faster: Man’s Search for Mean­ing by Vik­tor Frankl, What Should I Do with My Life? by Po Bron­son, and The Art of Hap­pi­ness by His Holi­ness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cut­ler, M.D.

Design. Story. Sym­phony. Empa­thy. Play. Mean­ing. Devel­op­ing a higher facil­ity in all of these will not guar­an­tee suc­cess, but they will cer­tainly move you closer to becom­ing bet­ter pre­pared for the next decade two years. Our world will only con­tinue to change faster. Will you be ready?

Author: Daniel Pink

Pub­lished: 2005, updates in 2006

My Rat­ing: 3.5 out of 4