Wag Your Tails Everyone!

"Capitalism needs to function like a game of tug-of-war. Two opposing sides need to continually struggle for dominance, but at no time can either side be permitted to walk away with the rope." (Pete Holiday)

Tails aren’t just found on dogs and cats anymore. They’re no longer a defining feature of many members of the animal kingdom. Tails- especially long ones- have become a feature in the realm of statistics and the kingdom of business, as well.

The idea of the long tail (with lower case letters) is used to describe a type of statistical distribution. As show in this illustration, the idea of the long tail is often shown as a red and yellow chart. The yellow tail-like portion of the chart shows the event that occurs very rarely within a population. The thicker red portion of the chart shows the evens that occur more often within a population. The events that take place in the yellow portion of the chart are the events that can be considered uncommon or rare.

A distribution like this can be expected because there are certain events that are considered rarer than others. That is, many people use computers everyday while a small population of people uses typewriters instead of computers. The people who use typewriters instead of computers would constitute part of the population found in the long yellow tail of the chart.

Capitalizing the letters in the phrase the “long tail,” and it becomes a concept first coined by Chris Anderson in this article from Wired Magazine. Anderson used the Long Tail chart in a business sense as opposed to the traditional statistical sense the model was initially meant for. He showed that if one could collect and market items that are not in high demand nor are “blockbusters,” a lucrative business can be created. Though it would create large mega-stores that could provide competition for traditional stores, successful business ventures could be created.

An example of the aforementioned type of business venture can be seen in the popular internet store amazon.com. Amazon takes advantage of the Long Tail idea by selling goods that can be considered hard to find in regular stores. These items cannot be found in regular stores for a wide variety of reasons including the fact they are not selling well in the stores. By placing these items in a store like the on-line one created by Amazon, more people can find the rare goods they are searching for.

The Long Tail can provide these kinds of good because they are able to store more items. This is so because most on-line stores have large warehouses in which their goods are stored. This differs from the limited stockrooms and shelf space of a traditional store. This makes the Long Tail a threat to regular business in that they can store more items and proved a greater range of goods to the consumer.

The Communication technologies that can be used to access the information hidden in the “tail” portion of the graph include things like blogs and aggregators. Blogs can help direct others to locations where they can find sought after goods while aggregators can help accumulate lists of places in which these goods can be found.

Still chasing that Long Tail around? Looking for another view on it? Look no further than Joy's blog. She has some very...interesing...views on both The Long Tail and big business. For another view on this idea, take a look at Chris' Blog. He provides a funny little story about useful The Long Tail has been to his movie watching life.

"Watching a baseball game on television is like chasing the great white whale in a goldfish bowl. It trivializes everything: men two inches high, a ball the size of a bee. It is like looking at the heavens through a dime-store telescope." (Ward Just)