The Long Tail
IST 400 | New Media & Social Technologies
iSchool
Syracuse University
Eric Hansen | ethansen+ist@gmail.com

Outline
Forces Behind the Long Tail
Lessons by Chapter
Two Imperatives
Nine Rules

Exercise
Think of the mainstream things you like
Think of the niche, trendy, obscure things

.com

Forces Behind the LT

Forces Behind the LT
Democratize the means of production
Camcorders, Laptops, Camera Phones
Democratize distribution
FedEx, eBay,YouTube
Connect supply and demand
Google, eBay, Amazon.com, Netflix

Lessons by Chapter

Lessons by Chapter
1. Moving from scarcity to abundance
2. Less hits/ blockbusters and more niches
3. Tracing the LT from catalogs >> online
4. Make it. Release it. Help me find it.
5. Wisdom of crowds/ one size doesn’t fit all

Lessons by Chapter
6. Aggregators rule in a LT economy.
7. P2P influence, pre/ post filters, context lists
8. Economy of abundance
9. “Digital natives” will not kill “the hit.”
10. Infinite choice is good.

Lessons by Chapter
11. Culture = hits + niches; parallel culture
12. Television has the most LT promise
13. Non-media case studies
14. Two imperatives + nine rules

Two Imperatives

Two Imperatives
1. Make everything available.
2. Help me find it.

Nine Rules

Nine Rules
Communication strategy version
Take advantage of a local and virtual
communications workforce.
Let internal/ external audiences build
creative assets and resources.
Distribute your brand/ message in as many
ways as possible.

destroyed by allegations of pedophilia.
2
2 Amazon.com; Internet Movie Database; Netflix; Wired research
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who's something of a documentary bu!, took this new-
found clout to PBS, which had produced Daughter From Danang, a documentary about
4
the children of US soldiers and Vietnamese women. In 2002, the film was nominated
Just as lower prices can entice
for an Oscar and was named best documentary at Sundance, but PBS had no plans to
consumers down the Long Tail,
release it on DVD. Hastings o!ered to handle the manufacturing and distribution if
recommendation engines drive
PBSthem to obscureit available as a Netflix exclusive. Now Daughter From Danang con-
would make content they
sistently not findin the top 15 on Netflix documentary charts. That amounts to a market
might ranks otherwise.
of tens of thousands of documentary renters that did not otherwise exist.
4 Amazon.com
There are any number of equally attractive genres and subgenres neglected by the

Nine Rules
Communication strategy version
Make your services/ brand/ message available
at an atomic, customizable level.
Vary your price/ incentive with each
configuration.
Share your raw data/ analyses to achieve a
competitive advantage.

1
— product not available in o!ine retail stores
(% total sales)
6,100
2,000
1,000
39,000 100,000 200,000 500,000
+

Nine Rules
Communication strategy version
Use the Internet & technology to reduce the
trade-offs you might consider.
Release your creative output/ message and
then respond to what the market tells you,
then adjust.
Give something away for free to aggregate a
large number of people in a single place.

Thank You

Photo Credits
• http://flickr.com/photos/jason_coleman/
• http://flickr.com/photos/dantaylor/
• http://flickr.com/photos/dystopos/
• http://www.longtail.com/about.html
• http://flickr.com/photos/neurokinetikz/
• http://flickr.com/photos/missrogue/
• http://flickr.com/photos/keso/
• http://www.changethis.com/10.LongTail
• http://flickr.com/photos/davidwilsonclarke/