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

Is this news?

[zanderredux]

He's just affirming that the 80/20 rule STILL WORKS PERFECTLY.

Bad news for hype-driven marketing and economics people, but Pareto got it right in 1897!

Hit's don't go away, of course

[2nd Post!]

I think the value add of the long tail is that the concept of "Hit" changes.

Where in a brick and mortar store, which suffers from space constraints so the ROI for any give stock has to be fairly high, the internet shines because the space constraints are looser and therefore the ROI for any given stock can be less and STILL be profitable.

If a Tower Records can only carry the top 10% of goods to be profitable, Tower Online can afford to carry the top 20% of goods and still be profitable. The top 10% will still sell, as always, but the next 10% may contribute up to 30% of the profits despite only being in the second percentile.

As efficiency increases, then each percentile after that becomes "more" profitable, relatively. If Best Buy online can afford to carry the top 30% and remain profitable, with the third percentile adding 11% of the profit and the second percentile adding 25% of the profit, they will sell more, necessarily, than Tower.

So all things being equal, the store with more inventory can sell more. The store with greater efficiency can afford to carry more.