People are talking about the "long tail" phenomenon.
This is not a new concept, at least not new in terms of Internet time. Based on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail), this phrase was coined in 2004 to describe certain Internet business and economic models. (Chris Anderson's article and later on his book) The name and the phenomenon are best observed in the diagram.
When I discussed this phenomenon with others, I got different responses. Some people focused on the "Winner takes all" appearance; while some appreciated the possibility of creating more choices for niche audiences, like Chris Anderson pointed out.
The winner-takes-all folks pointed to me the evidence of YouTube overtaking the video-sharing market while more than a handful of web sites offer the same feature. An even better example would be the fact that only a dozen or so Facebook applications among the five thousand (and growing) candidates enjoy 90% of daily usage. However, we could not draw a few simple rules of thumb as how and why the number one becomes number on.
The tail can be a blue ocean and yet a tough proposition. Netflix and Amazon are wonderful examples but hard to replicate. I guess if the cost structure is as low as my writing of this blog, there would be more stories to tell and songs to sing. I still remember in the early days Amazon's struggling for profitability and major investors had to reaffirm their confidence in the company to Wall Street. Look at Salesforce.com and its history of profitability. You will understand how long it takes to wag the tail.
I believe the long tail effect will be the governing law of Internet, like the Moore's law to the chip industry. There are more to be learned and leveraged, and more ingredients to be created and commoditized. I guess I am not too late for the show. Hopefully, I will get to blog more on this.
This is not a new concept, at least not new in terms of Internet time. Based on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail), this phrase was coined in 2004 to describe certain Internet business and economic models. (Chris Anderson's article and later on his book) The name and the phenomenon are best observed in the diagram.
When I discussed this phenomenon with others, I got different responses. Some people focused on the "Winner takes all" appearance; while some appreciated the possibility of creating more choices for niche audiences, like Chris Anderson pointed out.
The winner-takes-all folks pointed to me the evidence of YouTube overtaking the video-sharing market while more than a handful of web sites offer the same feature. An even better example would be the fact that only a dozen or so Facebook applications among the five thousand (and growing) candidates enjoy 90% of daily usage. However, we could not draw a few simple rules of thumb as how and why the number one becomes number on.
The tail can be a blue ocean and yet a tough proposition. Netflix and Amazon are wonderful examples but hard to replicate. I guess if the cost structure is as low as my writing of this blog, there would be more stories to tell and songs to sing. I still remember in the early days Amazon's struggling for profitability and major investors had to reaffirm their confidence in the company to Wall Street. Look at Salesforce.com and its history of profitability. You will understand how long it takes to wag the tail.
I believe the long tail effect will be the governing law of Internet, like the Moore's law to the chip industry. There are more to be learned and leveraged, and more ingredients to be created and commoditized. I guess I am not too late for the show. Hopefully, I will get to blog more on this.
