The Sometimes Fallacy of The Long Tail

There's been a lot of talk (maybe too much talk, to paraphrase Bono) about The Long Tail and how it changes everything about what people consume, how hits are made, what people want to hear, how everything big is small again -- but people have taken that perhaps too far as Lee Gomes contends in a recent blog post about hits. Lee's piece is well thought-out, and I think raises a very valid point that whereas there is value in the Long Tail idea, sometimes people take it too far and that "Hits" still count for a lot. His earlier piece is a more direct critique of The Long Tail and worth reading as well; we covered that piece about the Long Tail a couple weeks back.

Comments

the long tail isn't an amazing concept

[circletimessquare]

most people behave in flocks, a few don't

that's it

it's not like the internet is going to come along and change simple human psychology:

1. the internet is not going to make less people behave in herds

2. the internet isn't going to make more people behave independently

take an old concept, spruce it up with a buzzword, and people think gold has just been discovered. pffft

perhaps the most ironic thing about the idea of the long tail is that the concept itself is now a mass media driven success story with a herd-like following

Re:Is this news?

[2nd Post!]

The interesting part is that the linked article 0.8 percent of NetFlix inventory generates 30% of the rentals.

That means of course that the remaining 99.2% of the inventory generate 70% of the rentals. If they "got rid" of this catalog they would lose a lot of customers.

Of course the data is very coarse, as Spider-Man II happens to fall into the 99.2% category. They need to start analyzing in terms of percentiles; 0.8% generates 30%, 1.5% generates 40%, 8% generates 50%, 17% generates 60%, 42% generates 70%, 78% generates 80%, etc, all the way up to 100% of the rentals.

Area under the curve matters, not tail length

[Animats]

If anyone talks about the "long tail", ask them if they know how to integrate the area under the curve. The simplest number for evaluation purposes is the value for which half the area under the curve is before that point, and half is after. What's that number for movies? For books? For audio CDs? For iPod downloads?

Netflix says that 30% of rentals are from the top 50 films, so the halfway point is probably below 100.

This is a killer issue for companies that have huge hardware inventories. Consider Digi-Key. They have the broadest inventory of electronic parts in the industry, with over 70,000 parts. Which is a big win for them, because you can usually use them as your only supplier. So there's an Internet-based company that really does profit from the "long tail".

Digi-Key doesn't get much attention as an Internet company, but they're one of the most successful ones. They had online ordering early, and it works really well. Not just the web front end, which looks boring but has what users need, like the ability to search by component parameters. They have a near-complete collection of online data sheets. When a part you've ordered previously is about to be discontinued, you get an e-mail, so you can order a final supply before it goes away. And they have an incredibly effective order fulfillment operation. Orders entered before 7 PM (yes, PM) Central time ship the same day by FedEx. They actually do that, consistently. When you order from DigiKey, you get a confirmation e-mail when the order goes in, and another when it ships, with the FedEx tracking info. The shipping confirmation often comes in within fifteen minutes of placing the order. Now that's operating on Internet time. And that's for orders which might contain twenty different electronics parts in small quantities.

That's a real "long tail" company.

The long tail and eMusic

[Alioth]

It's funny then how eMusic, despite only exploiting the 'long tail', is the number 2 music store behind iTMS - easily beating all the online music stores selling the popular stuff. Of course, that might have something to do with eMusic being the only music store other than iTMS which sells music that will play on an iPod.