NYNY Solutions

Finally finished the last pages of The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson. I’ve been harrassed for months for not finishing it by a Hjalmar Gislason, a good friend who told me ages ago to read it.

In the book, Anderson explores the underlying mechanisms causing a shift from “hits” to “niches”. E.g. where a physical record-store may display a few thousand different CD’s, an online store like Amazon may offer hundreds of thousands, and a digital distribution system like iTunes may offer virtually any song ever recorded, still profitable.

The abundance of choice, ease of finding, sorting and getting peer-to-peer recommendations - are all factors that dramatically steer consumer behaviour away from mainstream hits and deeper into different niches.

I don’t expect to attend a single conference the next 2 years without seeing at least one slide with “long-tail” jammed into it somewhere. It’s the buzzword of the day, for sure.