NF

interesting information
a little dry in places
plenty of supporting detail ( )

I'm a decade late, but I've finally read The Long Tail. The nice thing about having read this now is that it's clear just how true the vision of this book really is. From the entertainment media that Anderson analyzed to Kickstarter moving up the starting point of the long tail of physical goods from post-manufacture to pre-manufacture, we live in a world where niches are normal. This isn't to say that we've fully adapted to them or fully realized the opportunities, but being a long tail consumer is now mainstream.

Even though the ideas in this book are now common place, Anderson's book still provides a useful framework for thinking about the long tail. The first, and perhaps most important thing to remember is that the long tail is still the long tail. The still are hits. Even within niches there are hits and tails. However, what the long tail represents is moving from a world where access to content is cut off after the short head (e.g., because of limitations in physical shelf space) to where availability extends far beyond what use to be available.

Anderson models three factors as driving the shift to the long tail. The democratization of the tools of production allows many more people to create content. Talent is not limited to those who become popular, so some of this content will be quite good. Just as important, some of this content may be truly excellent but in a specialized area that doesn't have mainstream appeal. My personal favorite example is video blog style adaptations of classic literature -- something I love, but which would never get made if the only distribution channel were main stream media.

Because there is no so much content, aggregation and distribution mechanisms become vital to success. Aggregation of digital information takes the expected forms -- search engines both general and specialized -- but aggregation in the physical world also aids the long tail. E.g., centralizing goods in warehouses (or decentralizing through peer-to-peer selling) can give consumers more choice than just relying on what's available in local stores; a nation might have enough demand to make a product worth stocking where a city does not.

But so much content, is not useful if it cannot be easily found. Most of what is in the long tail is low quality, and much of it might be great but not what you are looking for. The long tail is only valuable if you can find what you want. Ranking and filtering provide this search functionality. Another important effect of ranking and filtering is to lead people down the tail. Most people don't start with niche tastes. These tastes develop over time as individuals build more expertise in that niche.

None of these ideas is particularly complex, but that is what gives them power. The long tail is interesting because it is, to some degree, inevitable in a world of dramatically increased availability.

One quibble I had with the book is Anderson's misinterpretation of Barry Schwartz's frame of satisficing and maximizing. Schwartz and Anderson likely do have fundamentally different views of the value of choice. Nonetheless, Anderson still misrepresents satisficing. He represents it as settling for the choices available. Schwartz's presentation of satisficing is more nuanced -- not, admittedly, because he thinks a flood of choice is good but because he acknowledges that it is inevitable. As Schwartz presents it, satisficing is not about settling but rather about being clear about what you want. If you're clear about what you want, you can change your mindset to be satisfied with once you've found options that fit your criteria even if you later learn of new options.

Overall though, this was worth the quick read. ( )

3.5 ( )

When this was published it was a seminal book that defined the new business model for the internet. Since then, things have moved on, and some of the subjected predicted in the book never did come to pass.

In essence, the long Tail is the niche products and services that large stores and business cannot justify holding, when they only sell one or two a year. A small business could offer this prior to the internet coming along, but it was primarily mail order, or very specialised.

Along come the internet, and suddenly your customers could find you far easier than ever before, and you could justify stocking the item that sold one a month. With the advent of digital products, the sales capacity is infinite.

It is very well written, and i really enjoyed reading it. ( )

Makes me very uncomfortable regarding just how much writing I should be doing to keep up... ( )

I picked up a bunch of business books last weekend at the secondhand bookshop and have learnt a valuable lesson - whilst fiction books still remain relevant even if published 20, 50, 100 years ago, the same cannot be said for business books, particularly those orientated around digital businesses. Note to self - check the publication date next time!

This would have been a great read had I read it in 2006 when it first came out, but 13 years later it is outdated as technology has moved so quickly. To [[Chris Anderson]]'s credit he was pretty much on the ball in this book about the extent to which the internet would affect our shopping habits for music, television and movie media and general products. By 2006 many of these patterns had already started to emerge, but were nowhere near developed to the extent they are today. For example, he refers to Blockbuster in this book, which hadn't yet been completely killed off by the market shift towards Netflix.

It was still an interesting read, as the long tail (i.e. finding hugely successful markets at the niche end of shopping habits) is what's made zillions of dollars for Jeff Bezos and lots of smaller entrepreneurs. Very simply, although less people buy certain goods at the long end of the tail (on a graph of purchasing habits), when you aggregate the numbers of those people times the number of niche products they're interested in purchasing it creates a huge overall market, and online stores (which aren't limited by physical shop shelf space) have enabled businesses to capitalise on that.

Still some interesting points to take from the book at a general business level, but just too outdated for where we've moved on to (Instagram wasn't even a twinkle in someone's eye in 2006, and Etsy and YouTube were just getting going). I think there's a more up-to-date version of this book that would have been a better read.

2.5 stars - interesting and well written, but just dated. ( )

the story of digital disruption, what you missed and why you missed it ... ( )

The Long Tail, as a concept, is one of those fundamental world forces that I barely begin to understand. Here's a stab at a concise definition of the concept, from Clay Shirky in 2003:

"For my part, when I used the term in "Powerlaws, Weblogs, and Inequality", I didn't think of it as a coinage at all -- linear distributions have heads and tails and the weblog tail is long and flat....Chris and I and lots of other people use the phrase to describe a particular kind of distribution, but Chris has taken it in the direction of Tipping Point, a phrase that conjures up a whole complex of related issues, particularly issues of the business aspects of media and culture, that I didn't. So from my pov, Chris should get credit for originality, not of the phrase but of its current application and vividness."

The Long Tail of technology's effect on consumer entertainment is a particularly interesting problem as it relates to the book industry. I've got more to post here, but time and shallow understanding constrain my typing fingers. I'll return later with more (to write). ( )

Should have read it a long time ago. Does a good job popularizing concepts later/also discussed by Benkler, Weinberger, Kelly, and Shirky. ( )

Not worth reading the whole book. Two stars for small fraction that is worth reading. ( )

Did not finish. Meh. Why did I even download this? I'm not interested in marketing or finance or business. ( )

I'm sure five years ago this would have been more revolutionary to me but now it's more of an industry standard, the long tail. It was interesting to see how Anderson formulated the long tail, it's development as an economic trend for pop culture. It's also a good example of how quickly online technology is changing. At the publication YouTube was an infant and now it's exploded in terms of mainstream and "long tail" content. Also Facebook is not mentioned, only MySpace. Oh the times, they are a-changing. ( )

I found this something like a scrapbook of impressions, facts and notes taken on a journey of discovery with Anderson as a sort of Lewis and Clark of the post 2000 internet world.

He details the main perceived features of a giant unexplored continent based on fast personal computers, broadband internet, mass publishing and search in what he calls the "Long Tail", something that was always there, but previously too difficult to access.

The book has a sketchy nature but he makes it clear that we are participants in the first stages of this exploration, and that he is not writing history after the event. Google, Apple, Amazon etc. are all making prosperous paths through a whole new world of possibilities but not really knowing where it all leads.

I have to give this book 5 stars for the best shot yet at explaining these remarkable events and showing how radical they really are. ( )

A good read, and essential for anyone interested in how the rise of the internet and digital 'surrogacy' has and will change the landscape of business and economics.

For my review, read here:- http://digisqueeb.blogspot.com/2012/02/from-shelf-longer-long-tail-by-chris.html ( )

It amazes me how seemingly simple ideas become so powerful and make up such an interesting book. I'm currently looking at the long-tail of metadata and for that this book is absolutely crucial. Also know that he was a physicist by training... I recommend this book but I reckon most of you have already read it. Read also Free by the same author. Free is the title of the other book and btw it is also freely available online. What an interesting time we are living despite the BBC News 24/7 lambasting about Greece and Italy debt.... ( )

Very good insights on the modern landscape of business ( )

How the World Wide Web destroys shelves and creates business opportunities.

A must read for business owners. Great book. ( )

Reading of some years after publication this book represent a sum of conceptions that turn on tech sites. Is an explanation of the positive effect for market, "The Long Tail" is the tide of availability for anyone information or stuff crafts of man get easily takes from web advent 2.0. In comparison with the actual "monopoly" of Facebook, in Italy almost, but well telling not sure in the rest of the world, ok now in positive optimistic way, we can appreciate that this historic passage summarizes the realization of diminishing of the waste of time & cut down of prices of all products used & processed into vast scale. The new scenario give us an hope that the many inefficienses along communication & distribution in one world restricted alway more opportunity to pratical level of everyone's life; when I think for example to organize a trip or catch a unfindable book, but I hope in many services, as to get one job as happened to me in 2001 via internet, now I return to mine engagement in http://boinc.berkeley.edu that I think will be the future of grid republic, or rather achievement of internet spirit, almost for free as scientific discovery, a democratization of every possibility of human consciousness.

As I read this book I realised that in the three/four years since it was published I have absorbed the contents by osmosis. Given this it was a pleasant surprise to find the book so enjoyable, given I had already read it! I think that tells me the book is a good one. The term and the concepts it presents are as relevant today as in 2006. I learn a lot about the music industry , amongst others and recommend reading the book, even if you think you don't have to! ( )

Masterful and full of insight, if a little long-winded. If you want to understand the cultural, commercial and economic changes occurring as digital technologies sweep our world, this book is a one stop shop. ( )

Maybe not the end-all-be-all revelatory field guide to the new online economy its proponents gush over it to be, but still an easy to read and eye-opening primer to how the established systems of supply and demand have been radically changed by the internet and e-commerce. Anderson, a statistician by profession, "sees" data in ways most of us would only see rows of numbers, and the simplified graphs he provides bring a more concrete sense to the invisible world of economics and the shadowy one of marketing. And whether you know it or not, a lot of us are responsible for supporting this new kind of business, every time we buy something online or download a file. ( )

This book does a great job explaining what the long tail is, how to recognize it and some ways to apply it to your business. In short the long tail is the economy of abundance. It is a strong book from start to finish using many examples from different perspectives which gives you a much deeper understanding of the topic. ( )