Chasing the Long Tail

The best resources to understand the Long Tail are Chris Anderson’s original article on Wired, and his blog. In the last two years since the article, there’s been a lot of discussion around this, and how it impacts businesses, as well as other activities. The same holds true for community building and interaction, as well.

The foundation for the Long Tail rests on a set of premises – a comparison of transactions in an Economy of Scarcity versus an Economy of Abundance. Where resources are scarce or have a limit that’s fairly small, competition for resources drives up the price you pay. Given that the user ultimately bears the cost for the transaction, it makes sense to base activities on risk minimization – what you know that the user is willing to buy and pay for. In the book selling versus Amazon example that Chris uses, the result is that traditional book sellers find it makes more sense to stock only bestsellers, not works that may appeal to a niche market.

But where transaction costs become low or zero, and are comparable for any kind of transaction whether niche or mass, it becomes feasible to address ALL the requirements – and the many small opportunities outweigh the single large. There’s also a significant competitive advantage to a business model where you can focus on the many small – it isn’t possible for a traditional competitor to address this, so you have a free run.

But this doesn’t necessarily have to be a business. Take a look at Obesity Help – a network for people with a BIG problem. (Thanks to BlogHerald for this find). It isn’t easy to find information and resources, nor to share your views with like minded people in the real world - and quite often, people are quite reluctant to open up in situations where they can be identified, for fear of the negative repercussions. The possibility of remaining anonymous, coupled with the ease of interacting with people elsewhere, makes this kind of shared community feasible in the virtual world, whereas it’s close to impossible in the physical world. If nothing else, the costs for physical presence and the time required act as a deterrent to participation for most people.

And the presence of low cost or free resources makes it possible for anyone to start a community. No tech knowledge required to roll your own Web 2.0 site.

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