The Long Tail Goes Mainstream

Chris Anderson’s Long Tail meme is gathering steam – it is now getting picked up by the mainstream business press – The Economist runs an article on "Profiting from obscurity" in its current issue.

Some of the relevant quotes:

This has a number of intriguing implications. For one thing, opening up those previously uneconomic niche markets should increase overall demand: as people are better able to explore niches, they are more likely to find things they like, and may well consume more of them. This will then shift some demand, at least, away from hits.

And:

Perhaps the most profound implication of the long tail, however, is its impact on popular culture. As choice expands and people can more easily find niche content that particularly interests them, hits will be less important: so what will people talk about when gathered around the water cooler? In fact, says Mr Anderson, the idea of a shared popular culture is a relatively recent phenomenon: before radio and television, he notes, countries did not operate in “cultural lockstep”.

It is remarkable to me that most of the discussions of the Long Tail focus so much on the media business.  The Long Tail opportunity applies to all products, yet all the articles tend to focus on the same old categories – books, music and movies. Does this reflect the media bias of the media?

The Economist article briefly discusses the importance of mechanisms to help customers find the niche products most relevant to them. There’s a big opportunity here to create useful – and proprietary – meta-data about the products and services available in the Long Tail. Search is important – but unique and useful meta-data is even more important.  This is where entrepreneurs – and VC’s – should be focused as they seek to exploit the Long Tail opportunity.