the longer the tail, the better

When I first read this assignment, to define The Long Tail, I had absolutely no idea what exactly I would be defining. It wasn’t until I saw the graph that I remembered that we had learned about this in class. The graph triggered my memory and I instantly remembered that The Long Tail is the phrase given to describe how a large amount of products will sell very little while a few products will sell a large amount. You would think that the few items selling a lot would produce the most income, but actually the many products that only sell rarely actually produce the most income. If this explanation is a bit confusing, you can look at this graph which makes it easier to understand. If you are still having trouble, check out Meghan's post. The Long Tail at the end of the graph is how a certain business makes its money. In class and in the Wikipedia definition, the example of Amazon.com was given. Amazon makes most of its money through The Long Tail. Justin Timberlake would probably appear in the red area of the graph, but items like Pat Benatar’s Greatest Hits , which I own and love, would be more likely to appear in the yellow area and along with other such items would bring in more income.

Certain factors have to occur for The Long Tail to be successful. Chris Anderson’s article talks about how Nexflix is able to take advantage of The Long Tail because it has an abundant amount of storage space to keep popular and unpopular movies, which Chris talks about in his post. A regular movie rental store doesn’t have that luxury because there storage is limited to just that store. It seems to me that many internet companies are enjoying the most success from The Long Tail. Without the restriction of a limited amount of storage space and the ability to store things for cheaper, they are benefiting from being able to keep random things in stock.

Although The Long Tail is beneficial to many companies, it can also hurt companies that aren’t able keep less popular things. The Anderson article mentions how companies with broader coverage could be hurt by smaller companies that focus on just certain things. The smaller companies are able to focus down their content and cover it better than the bigger companies.

Not only will The Long Tail benefit companies, but Anderson believes that it could also benefit culture. The Long Tail offers people more of a choice and the ability to pick and choose. Individual’s needs are more easily met and because of this the culture level is able to rise. Instead of the most popular things being forced down our throats, The Long Tail provides choices and choices benefit culture.