Long Tail was popularised by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article, in which he mentioned Amazon.com and Netflix as examples of businesses applying this strategy. Anderson says that: “The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers.”
One person who opposes Long Tail is Andrew Keen. Keen has written a book called The Cult of the amateur and in this book he is looking into: “How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy.”
Keen complains that blogs are “collectively corrupting and confusing popular opinion about everything from politics, to commerce, to arts and culture”.
He goes onto say that Wikipedia perpetuates a cycle of misinformation and ignorance, and labels YouTube inane and absurd, “showing poor fools dancing, singing, eating, washing, shopping, driving, cleaning, sleeping, or just staring at their computers.”
So is Long Tail Good or Bad?
In my opinion Long Tail is a positive thing because it is encouraging niche markets to use the internet. The major companies and mainstream markets are always going to be at the head of the demand curve, however people should be able promote their own products or companies on the internet because even if only one person is interested, there is still an interest in the product. There are aspects in which I agree with some of Andrew Keen’s views because some internet sites are created for personal benefit (see my post about blog spamming.) However I believe that it is beneficial to the internet and to the people who use the internet if niche markets are encouraged.
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