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In our ongoing review of the phenomenally successful book, The Long Tail, we both thought long and hard about Anderson's theory in respect of why we personally have decided to blog and podcast. As we see it, consistent with our general philosophy that providing quality content is the best way to demonstrate our own professional abilities, The Long Tail considers our approach to business development with Anderson providing some interesting insight on the topic.

At page 73 of The Long Tail, Anderson asks "Why do they do it?" Why does anyone create something of value without a business plan or even the prospect of a pay cheque? This question is a key to understanding The Long Tail, partly because so much of what populates the curve does not start with commercial aim. In fact, as we have thought for some time, the traditional business model needs to be reworked and we personally avoid the one-hit wonder approach to our business plan. Anderson goes on to explain this idea at page 74 of his book, when he cites Tim Wu, a Columbia law professor, who calls this phenomenon (at page 74 of his book) "exposure culture", pointing to blogging as an example:

The exposure culture reflects the philosophy of the Web, in which getting noticed is everything. Web authors link to each other, quote liberally, and sometimes annotate entire articles. E-mailing links to favourite articles and jokes has become as much a part of American work culture as the water cooler. The big sin in exposure culture is not copying, but instead failure to properly attribute authorship. At the centre of this exposure culture is the almighty search engine. If your site is easy to find on Google, you don't sue - you celebrate.

We have provided at www.hullandhull.com a variety of articles that our firm has written over the years, plus a tremendous amount of resources in respect of articles that have been written by others. Futhermore, Ian and I believe that our new webpage (which will be arriving shortly) and our blogposts and podcasts only further demonstrate our commitment to always providing good content.

All the best, Suzana and Ian.

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This summer, we had the pleasure of reading several interesting books; the one that had the most profound effect on us, however, was Chris Anderson's book entitled The Long Tail.

During this conversation between Anderson and Vann-Adibe, Anderson asked Vann-Adibe what percentage of the 10,000 albums available in the jukeboxes sold at least one track per quarter. To Anderson's astonishment, the answer was 98%. Anderson soon found out the songs didn't sell in big numbers, but nearly all of them sold something. At page 8, Vann-Adibe explained to Anderson that in a world of minimal packaging costs and instant access to almost all content in a digital format, consumers exhibit consistent behaviour: they look at almost everything.

As Anderson noticed our increasing reliance on digital entertainment sources such as iTunes and Amazon, it became clear to him that the strong presence of these sources in our daily lives allows for the emergence of a market of niche products. Digital content, such as songs on iTunes, do not take up any physical space, thus allowing for an infinite number of slots to exist online. These songs, therefore, can be carried by iTunes for virtually no cost, revolutionizing the traditional market of supply and demand.

However as Anderson found, at page 9, everything you put out there will eventually find demand. This phenomenon initiated Anderson's consideration of a radically different business model, which he then coined as "The Long-Tailed Distribution".

More to come on Anderson's book The Long Tail in tomorrow's blog. Thanks, Ian and Suzana. --------