Chris Anderson – “The Long Tail” 03/26/2011
Posted by Derek Belt in Reviews.Tags: business, Chris Anderson, communication, digital media, digital technology, long tail, marketing, web economics
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Chris Anderson – The Long Tail
Reaching Millions
The great thing about broadcast is that it can bring one show to millions of people with unmatchable efficiency. But it can’t do the opposite–bring a million shows to one person each. Yet that is exactly what the Internet does so well. (Anderson, p. 5)
One Size Doesn’t Fit AllThe era of one-size-fits-all is ending, and in its place is something new, a market of multitudes. (Anderson, p. 5)
What Consumers Want
Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it in service after service–from DVDs at the rental-by-mail firm Netflix to songs in the iTunes Music Store and Rhapsody. People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what’s available at Blockbuster Video and Tower Records. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander farther from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a hit-centric culture, and simply a lack of alternatives). (Anderson, p. 16)
Hits And Niches
For the first time in history, hits and niches are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability. (Anderson, p. 24)
The Nature Of Markets
When you can dramatically lower the costs of connecting supply and demand, it changes not just the numbers, but the entire nature of the market. (Anderson, p. 26)
