i kinda love how folks are getting so upset about that whole "Long Tail is bogus" story. Then again, i love it when folks completely miss the point.
In a nutshell, nobody should be surprised that big blockbusters and perennial favorites do exceptionally well. They're blockbusters and perennial favorites for a reason. They cater to a demand, otherwise they wouldn't be blockbusters and… ok, you get the point. By the very definition of the word, people like things that are popular, and you can do quite well continually catering only to that.
The point of the Long Tail thing is that you can also do fairly well by providing a good bit of less popular stuff to smaller audiences. Dollars are, in fact, dollars, and while i probably won't give you $20 for the latest Metallica crap, i'll happily turn over that amount for a digital version of Looking for Jack. Are there going to be more folks looking for out of print Australian jazz-pop albums than Mega-Metal fans? No, i can safely say there aren't. Still, if you collect up me, and probably a few hundred other folks interested in other types of music, you'll do just fine thankyouverymuch.
What the long tail specifies is not "Toss out that golden goose for thirty for regular geese, two chicken and a handful of army ants", but more "Your audience also wants a diverse product".
Heh, i even like the comment at the end of the article about how the vast majority of bloggers aren't read. Of course not. Anyone expecting fame, fortune and riches from blogging about their cat is delusional.
Doesn't mean they don't get indexed and added to search results, though, and sometimes those obscure folks actually do have something interesting to say.
Ok, no, not really, but it might happen one day.
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