The Long Tail

I've read several Internet/business related books and I have to say this is my favourite by far. The concept explains the fundamental differences of traditional business models (constraint by shelf space/airway space) with one where businesses are free of those constraints. With the fundamental differences, the strategy behind this channel (despite the selling of the same goods) would naturally be different.

Any manager/executive that is using the Internet as a channel to sell goods traditionally limited by space (shelf/airway, etc.) would really benefit from this book.

Also, with some books, I feel anything beyond the first couple of chapters would be a waste of paper ... with the Long Tail, I was intrigued throughout. Every chapter had ideas that makes it worth reading.

This was a very interesting book about how business changes in the world of unlimited supply (eg. unlimited song options on iTunes compared to limited options on a store shelf). It looks at niche marketing and how that could become a bigger force in coming years. I found this to be a great read, and strongly recommend it to anyone interested in business and tech trends.

This is an important book to understand how business in changing. The book is a bit long; the first four chapters and the last four chapters were plenty for me.

THE LONG TAIL....Chris Anderson does a great job of explaining the concept of the long tail. He shows how over the last couple hundred years the history of business is a history of hits. Businesses tried to carry what would sell the most. Bookstores carried the best sellers. Movie theaters showed the top selling movies. Music stores only carried records they thought would sell in volume.

This has changed with the development of the internet. Now companies like Amazon can sell almost any book ever printed. This is the long tail, all the products that businesses can sell that before they couldn't sell in volume high enough to generate a profit. Now companies like Netflix can carry almost any professional movie ever made. YouTube is taking this a step farther and providing an outlet for all the amateur movies recorded. iTunes sells a huge portion of the songs recorded. There are other businesses exploiting the long tail.

Chris Anderson found that there are a couple requirements for an online store selling products to be successful with the long tail concept. The first couple conditions make sense, there has to be a way for more people to create the product, and a way to get the product out to the consumers. Computers now allow many more people to be involved in the production of books, movies and songs. The third condition is there has to be a way for customers to find what they want. Internet search engines make it almost trivial to find that unusual game, toy, or electronic device that you've heard about or even just wondered if it existed.

The world is a complex place. It can be overwhelming. A model like The Long Tail provides insight and understanding into what otherwise would be just over powering noise.

Chris provides fascinating examples. He has a lot of interesting data. This book is very insightful, and well worth reading.

I had seen this book on the featured table in the business section but somehow I had not picked it up? As I was reading Seth Godin's "Small Is the New Big" it became clear that "The Long Tail" was a must read! As I personally do not read Wired magazine nor do I listen to the news… allot of the information in this book was new to me.

The Long Tail re affirmed my belief in the impact of the Internet on our ability to research and reach more information and products than before. It inspired me to look a Google, Wikipedia, Amazon and EBay with a new understanding of their impact on our lives.

In the same way that Thomas Friedman's "The world is flat" enlightened me as to the key trends in the evolving global economy… "The Long Tail" put a great spin on the increasing force of a digital economy.