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Doubts Multiply About the "Long Tail"
fruey sends in a New Scientist analysis of the many second thoughts about the Long Tail theory. It summarizes four studies that show, in different markets, that the tail is both flatter and thinner than originally supposed, and that blockbusters are not going away in those markets — they are getting bigger. It's theorized that widely used collaborative filtering software is magnifying the winners' share of the various pies, and peer influence is a large contributor to consumer behavior.
Looks like he got his long tail, but I don't know why anyone would expect Harry Potter to sell less simply because someone could chose to get some out-of-print book or the like. Fill Barnes and Noble with shitty fantasy that will never sell and HP will still break records. The Internet can't change that.
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A summary that told me so much, yet so little.
"Long Tail theory" No idea. Apparently I missed an article somewhere.
"flatter and thinner" I gotto admit, tails in an evolutionary sense popped to mind here for some reason. Though the mention of markets made that an obvious red herring.
"blockbusters are not going away" Aha, movies!
"widely used collaborative filtering software is magnifying the winners' share of the various pies" Say what?
I stopped buying CDs when the music companies started sueing their own customers.
You too? I thought I was the only one. I rarely bought music in the past, then downloaded a few songs which I would never have paid for but just wanted to hear. Then the RIAA started with their crap and I stopped listening to it all. There's nothing like being blamed for their crappy product. I mean, have the major labels actually put out that much good music in the last 10 years to even download? It seems like the bar has gotten awfully low.
As far as the "long tail" theory, I'm surprised that it was accepted that much at the time. Anderson sounded like the he had the same kind of glazed eye look about the future of the internet as the Web 2.0/Social networking people do when you talk to them.
Do people fundamentally change when they have more than one option to choose? I would have guessed rarely. Just because people have more choices does not mean they make statistically random choices. People have far greater psychological issues about what they choose and why they choose them than just availability. People like to be on the bandwagon and choose what their friends do, they like to choose things they've heard of and feel safe about, what's been recently marketed to them, comfort foods vs. healthy foods, etc.
Although we are all unique individuals following the herd, we by-and-large make the same choices about things, with a little bit of variance thrown in to keep it interesting. Raise your hand if you've never eaten at a McDonalds or drank a Coke before.
The internet may offer a wide variety of things in theory, but in reality it is businesses trying to offer customers the products that will give them the best ROI, and that means you'll make more money off the herd than a few outsiders demanding obscure products and services.
It makes sense to push items that the herd wants to buy. It makes sense to push the same things the other players are pushing and focus on better volume marketing, rather than pushing obscure things that a relatively few want and spending more money on targetted advertising.
The consumer follows the same approach as others, otherwise Walmart would not have been able to be in the position it's in.
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The markets studied in this work are notorious for being driven by short term fads. Online downloads are by predominantly ephemeral pop music, and a study of 14,000 teenagers? These are the people most influenced by peers and the 'so last week' attitude, They haven't had the time to explore and broaden their outlook.
Try getting a more diverse sample and I think that the long tail will look a lot fatter. People in their 30's and up have had time to develop far more diversified tastes and will have much more eclectic buying habits.
Pick a cohort of 14,000 boomers and you will see something very different.
Not exactly.
It is the hypothesis that ALL of the non-Harry Potter books COLLECTIVELY will sell as much or more than the Harry Potter books themselves.
Even that is wrong. It isn't a single book or a single series. It's the percentages. It is the hypothesis that the 80% of lesser selling titles will equal or exceed the sales of the top 20%. Or 90% / 10%. Or wherever you want to make the cut.
In theory, it is easy to demonstrate. Suppose there are 2 blockbusters released in a category ... and the average person buy 10 items in that category. So, 20% of the sales would go to the blockbusters ... but 80% would go to the "long tail".
The problem is that the average person does NOT operate that way. They might by the latest Harry Potter book ... and no other book that year. The same with music. The same with movies.
The article was generally ok, but clearly not completely understanding of what the "Long Tail" means. Of course, from what I've read (including the book itself) the interpretations and applications of the theory are rather fluid anyway.
The biggest issue I have with the article is that it seemed to be conveying that the "Long Tail" meant an end to blockbusters. It doesn't mean that at all. It just means that there's enough business in the "Long Tail" to make it profitable to sell items that weren't blockbusters given the low cost structures of Internet retailing. Amazon and iTunes both make hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly on items that only sell 2 or 3 copies. With traditional retailers, space is a limited commodity and must be devoted to items that will sell in enough volume to justify carrying them.
Now, IANAPhd, and the article quotes quite a few that seem to disagree with the idea of the "Long Tail", but it seems the evidence they discuss is rather weak. Yes, people are influenced by others in their choices. Much of this comes from the vast history of humanity and our tendency to form social groups. The Internet has yet to truly begin to change humanity in the ways that it will. The key thing with respect to the article is the definition of what our peer groups are. Despite the global nature of the Internet, most of our peer influence is local. As more and more people around the world connect and begin to actually talk to others outside their current peer groups, those peer groups will expand and change. That is going to be a key driver in generating the diversity that the "Long Tail" predicts.
The "Long Tail" is only beginning because humanity's experience with the Internet and the interconnectedness that it brings is only beginning. Just because it hasn't completely happened doesn't mean that it's not happening.
The article (what I read of the boring thing) didn't say much of anything except "stuff one person will buy won't outsell stuff millions of people will buy"
In short, DUH. hardly profound.
Well, it's hardly profound if you oversimplify it and misstate it.
The idea behind the long tail was that the massive variety that on-line retailers can offer, as compared to brick and mortar retailers who have severe shelf-space constraints, would lead people to find and buy more obscure stuff.
No one really expected the obscure stuff to outsell the popular stuff, but there was an expectation that some of the dollars formerly directed to popular stuff would get spread instead across the more obscure stuff. This would cause the sales of popular stuff to flatten a little and the "long tail" of obscure stuff to thicken a little.
That seems pretty reasonable on its face, but it's apparently not what happens.
It appears, in fact, that without the friction imposed by retailer shelf-space decisions the blockbuster effect is enhanced. When millions of products are available, people pay even more attention to peer recommendations, and that drives a more powerful blockbuster effect. The use of automated popularity-based recommendation software probably adds to the effect as well.
Is that profound? You decide. I think it's at least interesting.
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Or, at least, I used to. A few years ago I got sick and tired of being FORCED to watch advertisements for movies I will NEVER watch, and FBI warnings that mean nothing to me. So, I stopped buying DVDs.
Now I just watch them at the theatre if I think they will be good or just wait for them to appear on U-Verse.
***offtopic***Will someone tell those ass-wipes in Hollyweird that they are losing valuable customers with this practice of putting in useless ads and trying to force people to watch them. I have DVDs that are getting long in the tooth and it's kind of sickening to see ads for movies that have come and gone. Why can't things be like my DVD of The Matrix? When I put The Matrix into my DVD Player, the thing starts at the movie! What a unique concept! DUMBASSES!
Don't even get me started on Blu-Ray. I'm supposed to buy my movie collection again just to get innundated with the same crap?***offtopic***
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