THE LONG TAIL - ILLUSTRATED - PART III
Following yesterday's discussion regarding the definition of "The Long Tail", we were interested in Anderson's analysis of this term by use of a creative analogy: imagine today's culture as if it were an ocean and the only features which can rise above the surface of the water are islands of blockbuster hits. We must thus imagine the water line as the economic threshold or the amount of sales necessary to satisfy the distribution channels. The islands represent the products that are popular enough to rise above that line, and thus profitable enough to be offered through distribution channels with scarce capacity, which is to say the shelf space demands dictated by the most powerful retailers.
However, these islands are, of course, just the tips of a vast undersea mountain. With the new shape of cultural commerce and the Internet's increasingly extraordinary economic efficiencies, niche products, previously submerged under the water, can now be recognized and found through the use of powerful search engines. This abundance of niche products which exist beneath the surface, therefore, has the capability to become a larger economy than the small one which has risen above the water. We will continue our discussion of Chris Anderson's The Long Tail in tomorrow's blog.
Thanks, Ian and Suzana.
