Wag the Tail

Grok Headline matches for Wag the Tail

The long tail is fractal. Why I buy the
long tail, having been a skeptic

The long tail is fractal. Why I buy the
long tail, having been a skeptic 03/29/2005 03:01 PM
The long tail is jagged, fractal – perhaps as any market achieves maximum efficiency it starts to look like everything...

Wagging Your Tail

Wagging Your Tail 03/14/2005 06:02 PM
Executive recruiter Dave Hardie on the benefits of leaving gracefully, consumer-products experience, and balancing We versus I.

The Long Tail

The Long Tail 12/31/2004 07:10 PM

The Long Tail: Here's something entertaining in an odd way. This page will pull a blog entry out of the...void.

Click "Next Item" to get another one. They come from blogs all around the world, and are presented with no context or other information (there is a link if you want to actually visit the site the entry came from).

Only about half of the entries I looked at were in English. All of them were posted in the last two minutes.

I can't figure out why this was so addictive. It's like little snippets of communication from anywhere and everywhere.

Tail gunning

Tail gunning 01/04/2005 02:08 AM
Wired editor Chris Anderson has started a good blog to follow up on his Long Tail essay and seed the ground for a book on the subject. Cory Doctorow takes Anderson to task for his "middle-of-the-road" stance on efforts to lock down intellectual property via increasingly desperate and continuingly futile technical schemes for digital rights management (DRM) -- schemes that tip the balance between propertyholders and the public way too far.

Anderson is dead right in elucidating the way the Net economy restores market value to works that are not big hits. The story of the next few years will be one about whether that market in "long tail" intellectual goods (I wrote about its promise in October) thrives in the same open environment that allowed the Net itself to evolve and prosper -- or shrivels under the furious weight of technical and legal efforts to squeeze every last dollar from every last little hair on the long tail. My money is on the former, happier outcome. But it won't turn out that way without persistent and stubborn resistance -- which we can thank Doctorow and the EFF for ringleading -- to the "we control the horizontal, we control the vertical" paternalism and anti-consumerism of the DRM mafia.

(For a little example of what happens when rights holders hold too many cards, check out the sad saga of "Eyes on the Prize," the documentary that is the "principal film account of the most important American social justice movement of the 20th century," in a Stanford professor's words from Wired News' account. "Eyes on the Prize" can't be publicly shown or distributed because "the filmmakers no longer have clearance rights to much of the archival footage used in the documentary." You want your audiovisual history? Pay up first!)

Assuming the Long Tail isn't clipped by DRMania, we face an ever-expanding banquet of media goods. The BBC sounds an alarm. We are coming face to face with the scourge of "digital obesity":

Gadget lovers are so hungry for digital data many are carrying the equivalent of 10 trucks full of paper in "weight". Music, images, e-mails, and texts are being hoarded on mobiles, cameras laptops and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), a Toshiba study found. It found that more than 60% kept 1,000 to 2,000 music files on their devices, making the UK "digitally fat".

Or maybe not. The term is a ludicrous oversimplification and distortion; we keep all this stuff around precisely because we can now -- because it doesn't fill trucks, it fills infinitesimal chips and drives, and it's easier to keep everything around than to worry about cleaning house. Carrying the stuff around? No problem. Finding it? Harder. Finding time to absorb it all? There's our rub.

Obesity is simply the wrong metaphor. Thi s post by Rajat Paharia hits closer to the mark:

I'm finding that the "digital photo effect" is starting to make its way into my music and video experiences as well. What's the DPE? My ability to produce and acquire has far outstripped my ability to consume. Produce from my own digital camera. Acquire from friends, family, Flickr, etc. This has a couple of ramifications: 1. I feel behind all the time. 2. Because there is so much to consume, I don't enjoy each individual photo as much as I did when they were physical prints. I click through fast. 3. Because of 1 and 2, sometimes I don't even bother.

I first noticed this phenomenon back in the late '80s, when I switched from buying music on vinyl to CDs, and noticed how quickly I stopped listening to an entire 50-60 minute CD if the first track or two didn't grab me. Of course, this kind of impatience coincided with the speeding up of my professional life and my crossing the threshold into my 30s. Something tells me that the problems Paharia and I and perhaps you are facing in this realm of overload may not feel so dire to today's teenagers and twenty-somethings, for whom this thick soup is a native muck.

Still, the "I feel behind all the time" phenomenon is real enough, as today's RSS addicts know -- and as indicated by the rising popularity among the geeknoscenti of David Allen's "Getting Things Done" methodology, with its promise of liberation from uncomfortable behind feelings.

I'm not liberated yet. Behindness surrounds me on all sides. But finding stuff is getting easier. I'm slowly trying to teach myself the methodology that Doctorow has modeled for several years now: If you want to be able to find something in the future, don't bury it in your files -- blog about it, put it out on the Net, where Google will never lose it, and if for some reason you can't find it, someone else will probably have picked it up and saved it for you.

So to hell with bookmarks, and long live the blogmark. Here's a handful:

Lexis Nexis Alacarte: No longer the preserve of big-media newsrooms -- now in handy personal-journalism size.

For years, I tuned my guitar with one of those little electronic tuners in a plastic box; but when they were two, my kids decided that it made a great toy and disembowelled it. Well, all that is solid melts into Net: Today you don't need a physical object, all you need is a Net connection and a browser. Just Google "guitar tuner" for a bunch of options; I liked this one for its retro look.

Feel-good link of the day: First it was the beer and wine, now it's spicy food! Curry may help block Alzheimer's disease. (It's the turmeric.)

Erasing the tail

Erasing the tail 09/26/2004 09:23 AM
The NY Times Magazine article on blogs makes the same old error. Viewing blogs through the media lens, only the left-hand of the side of the power curve is visible. As Matthew Klam, the article's author says: In a recent national survey, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that more than two million Americans have their own blog. Most of them, nobody reads Thus, the tail of the power curve — which is probably at least 5 million blogs long — gets erased. In fact, the tail is where blog are having their most important effects. That's where...

root-tail 1.1

root-tail 1.1 04/12/2004 07:21 AM
Allows printing of text directly to the X11 rootwindow

FC Now: Opportunities in the Tail

FC Now: Opportunities in the Tail 06/22/2005 02:39 AM
If you haven't yet heard - or used - the phrase 'the long tail,' you're not buzzword compliant for 2005. Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired Magazine, coined the phrase in an article that appeared last fall in that magazine....

Mac Tail, iPod Dog?

Mac Tail, iPod Dog? 05/21/2004 01:01 AM
Is this a sign that Apple views the current Mac platform entering a period of relative stability after six years of flux? By Matthew Rothenberg (via MyAppleMenu)

The Long Tail of PayPal

The Long Tail of PayPal 03/14/2005 04:23 PM

While setting up the contribution mechanism at PayPal, I got to thinking about how PayPal is (or certainly has the potential to be) a Long Tail business. With lots of features, extensive documentation, tons of implementation examples, and no up-front fees, they make it so easy to sell anything to anyone worldwide that the cost of doing business for individuals and small businesses is almost nothing. My friends Tamara and Julie make soap in their apartment and sell it online for a few bucks a bar, with PayPal handling the checkout process and some of the order fulfillment stuff as well. And there are millions of little cottage industries like this scattered across the web, businesses enabled by PayPal each selling maybe a few items a week or month.

However, there are a couple of issues with PayPal's attempt to harness the Long Tail of online retail. Shipping costs are proportionally more expensive for less expensive items...it's roughly the same price to ship a $350 iPod as it is to ship a $20 book or tshirt. PayPal's fees are a bigger percentage of the total sale for cheaper items as well; they take $0.30 right off the top. That doesn't sound like a lot but for a merchant selling $3.00 items, that's 10% less profit, which could be a bit of a deterrent in wanting to sell cheap items through PayPal. It'll be interesting to see if PayPal sees a Long Tail effect benefiting their bottom line and tinkers with the fees to encourage more cheap offerings.

Organizing the Long Tail

Organizing the Long Tail 02/05/2005 10:04 PM
The Long Tail is one the few things about the blogosphere that seems new. Here’s an obvious question: is there any structure lurking in that Long Tail, or is it just an undifferentiated skinny pointy blob? The answer starts here...

Test-Tail-Multi-0.02

Test-Tail-Multi-0.02 04/08/2005 08:39 PM

Test-Tail-Multi-0.01

Test-Tail-Multi-0.01 04/08/2005 05:59 PM

Extending the Long Tail

Extending the Long Tail 12/22/2004 01:52 AM
Meanwhile, Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired, (no relation) has just launched The Long Tail, the blog that follows his seminal article on the subject. Even better, he's got a book coming out on the topic. Now we just need a "most popular unpopular items" chart....

J2SE 1.5: A Tiger By the Tail

J2SE 1.5: A Tiger By the Tail 06/28/2004 06:08 PM
JavaOne -- The Standard Edition is slated for a fall release via the Java Development Kit (JDK).

Wired 12.10: The Long Tail

Wired 12.10: The Long Tail 10/07/2004 04:15 PM

File::Tail is damned useful

File::Tail is damned useful 01/18/2004 11:28 PM
In the last week or so, I've developed a renewed appreciation for the File::Tail Perl module. If you haven't guessed from the name, this module provides a native Perl implementation of something akin to tail -f somefile and--better yet--it can do this on multiple files at the same time. In case you're wondering, the reason I find it so helpful is that I've been building various tools that need to perform real-time scanning of log files. Specifically, I'm dealing with...

Amazon's tail was a bit shorter

Amazon's tail was a bit shorter 12/24/2004 12:47 PM

Chris updates some figures from his original article where he had written that "57% of Amazon's book sales are of books not available in stores". He writes in an update, "I've now spoken to Jeff Bezos (and others) about this. He doesn't have a hard figure for the percentage of sales of products not available offline, but reckons that it's closer to 25-30%. That would put it in line with Netflix's and Rhapsody's figures." There is an interesting discussion going on in the comments as well.

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Incentives along the Long Tail

Incentives along the Long Tail 06/05/2005 11:21 PM
Chris Anderson has just published a great piece on his Long Tail blog called The dangers of "Headism". Go read it if you're into all that. If you're not into all that, I still think this picture is worth a thousand words: It explains a lot of what I've had to explain and re-explain to people in recent months. Heck, go to his post anyway just to look at the other pictures. They're simple but explain things nicely....

E-tail soars in 2004

E-tail soars in 2004 01/05/2004 01:31 PM
ZDNet Jan 5 2004 12:19PM ET

Catch A Tiger By Its Tail

Catch A Tiger By Its Tail 06/29/2004 10:55 AM
Following up on my previous entry on Tiger's Search Technology I'll hit on the other announced features and additions with my personal feelings summing up...

Long Tail of Latent Demand

Long Tail of Latent Demand 12/27/2004 11:16 PM
I'm a huge fan of The Long Tail, but the demand it represents is nothing new.  What's new is how we discover it. Latent Demand (also known as Induced Demand) is the potential earnings if a market is served efficiently. ...

The Long Tail the book and the bl0g

The Long Tail the book and the bl0g 12/24/2004 12:47 PM

Chris Anderson is writing a book about The Long Tail which started as one of my favorite articles that he wrote for Wired. He has also started a blog about the Long Tail. The original article is online at Wired.

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Apple Grabs Enterprise Tail

Apple Grabs Enterprise Tail 06/29/2004 05:05 PM
Internet News Jun 29 2004 9:33PM GMT

Linux tweaks the tiger's tail

Linux tweaks the tiger's tail 08/05/2004 09:23 PM
ZDNet Australia Aug 6 2004 2:03AM GMT

Business opportunities of the Long Tail

Business opportunities of the Long Tail 03/19/2005 02:46 AM

I'm sitting here listening to Chris Anderson discuss the various aspects and insights he has into the 'long tail' phenomena.

I find this stuff fascinating - not from a macro-economic POV - but from the gut level validation of all my ideas and feelings - over the past 25 years. It just makes sense to associate yourself with the niche players and small entities - than bother with the big boys.

I've always felt that way.....

It's amazing to see it evolve into an entire school of thought.

---

So now Chris is talking ot Joe Kraus - who started Excite (and admits why the failed at Excite) and comparing it to JotSpot - which he calls a 'long tail' business.

I wonder how Chris considers JotSpot 'long tail'?

I think I'll ask him that question.

- self service - lowering the cost of customer acquisition?
- end-user created apps and a marketplace for those apps (JotSpot as a platform?)
- something about Wikis and collaboration?

---

FOLLOW-UP: Joe concurs that all Long Tail plays should be platforms - and markeplaces. I totally agree! That's the model for success in the Long Tail.

Amazon Stretches The Long Tail Even
Longer

Amazon Stretches The Long Tail Even
Longer 04/04/2005 01:54 PM
There have been many efforts to create "print on demand" solutions -- though, often these have been done by brick and mortar book stores looking to come up with ways to compete with Amazon and other online sellers. However, most of these in-store print-on-demand offerings have never gotten very far. So, wouldn't it be amusing if the company that actually made print-on-demand make sense was Amazon itself? The company has now bought a print on demand company that will make it easier for Amazon to sell books with less demand -- since they won't have to stock any inventory. It's yet another sign that Amazon recognizes the importance of the long tail, in that this should let them sell books even further out on the tail, with little inventory expense to itself.

"The Long Tail: Mainstream Media
Meltdown"

"The Long Tail: Mainstream Media
Meltdown" 04/13/2005 08:20 AM

The Long Tail: Mainstream Media Meltdown

The Long Tail: Mainstream Media Meltdown 04/13/2005 04:29 AM
The Mainstream Media Meltdown .. kind of a win-win .. very useful post

longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2005/04/media_meltdown.html< br />track this site | 3 links

Apple pins date on Tiger's tail

Apple pins date on Tiger's tail 04/12/2005 08:37 AM
Desktop and server versions of Mac OS 10.4 will be ready on April 29, the Mac maker says.

Tail-Heavy Cargo Plane Tips in L.A. (AP)

Tail-Heavy Cargo Plane Tips in L.A. (AP) 05/27/2004 09:31 PM
AP - A cargo plane being unloaded at Los Angeles International Airport tipped backward Thursday, stranding seven workers 40 feet in the air for about an hour.

Holiday e-tail watchers sing 'ka-ching'

Holiday e-tail watchers sing 'ka-ching' 12/26/2003 01:50 PM
Two research firms and Amazon.com confirm earlier numbers suggesting another record year for online holiday sales.

Abandoned shopping carts an e-tail
challenge

Abandoned shopping carts an e-tail
challenge 06/02/2004 01:26 PM

Stardust Probe Enters Comet's Tail
Tomorrow

Stardust Probe Enters Comet's Tail
Tomorrow 01/01/2004 03:55 PM

"Long Tail" from Chris Anderson to
become book, bl0g

"Long Tail" from Chris Anderson to
become book, bl0g 12/22/2004 01:30 AM
Xeni Jardin: Wired Magazine's editor-in-chief Chris Anderson says:

I've signed a deal to do The Long Tail book with Hyperion (in the US--Random House will be publishing it in the UK and others TBA elsewhere). I should be turning in the manuscript next fall for a spring 2006 release. Following John Battelle's great example, I'm starting The Long Tail blog to help me preview my book thinking and research in public and to tap the wisdom of crowds on this rich subject.

Link to thelongtail.com, also available in tasty, lean RSS. Link to online copy of original Long Tail essay which appeared in Wired Magazine.

Apple Hopes Users Will Grab Tiger By The
Tail

Apple Hopes Users Will Grab Tiger By The
Tail 04/08/2005 04:59 AM

By Brad Cook, MacNewsWorld

Police Offer Reward in Horse Tail Thefts
(AP)

Police Offer Reward in Horse Tail Thefts
(AP) 04/04/2005 08:57 PM
AP - Some horses in central Wisconsin may still be bright eyed, but no longer bushy tailed. Waushara and Portage county sheriff's departments are trying to figure out who is cutting off the tails of some horses.

Apple pins April 29 date on Tiger's tail

Apple pins April 29 date on Tiger's tail 04/12/2005 11:04 AM
Desktop and server versions of Mac OS X 10.4 will be ready later this month, the Mac maker says.

"Bnoopy: The long tail of software.
Millions of Markets of Dozens."

"Bnoopy: The long tail of software.
Millions of Markets of Dozens." 03/14/2005 05:53 PM

Nic Harcourt and Elvis Costello
contemplate the last flick of the
dinosaur's tail

Nic Harcourt and Elvis Costello
contemplate the last flick of the
dinosaur's tail 02/01/2005 08:52 PM
Along with driving, hiking, and jogging, snow shoveling is an activity that benefits from time-shifted audio content. Here in New England we've had plenty of opportunities lately to indulge in that least favorite of winter sports. A couple of storms ago I had a chance to catch up with Kent Beck's excellent keynote at the Developer Testing Forum. Yesterday I wasn't planning to absorb ideas, just music. But my selection -- this week's Sounds Eclectic from KCRW's Nic Harcourt -- brought ideas to my headphones as well as Elvis Costello's hour-long studio performance. ...
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Wag the Tail

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