The long tail is dead, long live the long tail
Although a group of 10 or so sites may account for most of the internet’s traffic, it is the long tail that provides the spice of conversation.Nicholas Carr writes in the Guardian that the Internet is being carved into information plantations, where top 10 big names including Google, Wikipedia, Myspace, Facebook, Yahoo and others accounted for 40% of the internet’s page views.
A couple of players dominate various segments of the internet: Google has 65% of the search market; Yahoo dominates in mail, Myspace in social networks, and so on.
This is not new. Pareto’s principle existed even before Pareto put a name to the phenomenon.
The concentration of power continues in all spheres of human activity, despite the emergence of promising ideologies and technologies throughout history.
Coming to the long tail, the incredibly cheap cost to have an online presence ensures that the marginalized, the individual will continue to have a voice, and there will be more than few ears to hear that solitary thought.
The long tail also ensures that these ‘Information Plantations’ do not turn into ‘Walled Gardens’ of yore.
Labels: long tail, research report, trends
posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:04 PM
1 Comments:
Both the long tail and the head of the internet have been getting a lot of attention, but the Compete.com blog has an interesting post about the "Torso" of the internet - sites with over 1 million unique visitors. It's cool to see what lands in between the tail and the head - check it out: http://blog.compete.com/2007/05/30/netflix-blockbuster-free-subscriptions-brightspot/
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