Dan Mitchell writes:
... [Media columnist Jack] Shafer found a reason for the sudden surge of traffic: somebody had come across the old article and posted it to Digg. com, where registered users vote on which articles are the most (or the least) interesting or worthwhile. ¶ Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, would no doubt see this as a perfect example of "the long tail" in full wag. The lengthening of the long tail means that old or minimally popular stuff — like an old Slate article or a new album by an obscure Bolivian folk musician — is becoming more valuable thanks to the falling costs of production, storage and distribution. Or as Mr. Anderson puts it on his blog, markets are "increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of 'hits' at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail" (longtail.com). ...
Link: New York Times. Expect more Long Tail stories. Anderson's book about "the long tail" is finally out and he's on book tour.
Here's one by Chris Anderson in the July issue of Wired. The Rise and Fall of the Hit. Link: Wired. --Dennis
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