Chris Anderson @ Golden Gate University

I heard about this via Upcoming.org (my whole life is there), they had free breakfast (crepes/fruits, oj, coffee, water) and books! And old people



Chris Anderson's idea on "the long tail" has been around for a while. I wanted to break it down but it was taking too long and proving rather difficult. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia

Anderson argued that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. Examples of such mega-stores include the online retailer Amazon.com and the online video rental service Netflix. The Long Tail is a potential market and, as the examples illustrate, the distribution and sales channel opportunities created by the Internet often enable businesses to tap into that market successfully.

Read more on the original 2004 Wired article, the Wikipedia entry or the author's blog. I love the concept, you wouldn't think it could fill a book but I'm really enjoying it (I haven't finished it yet). Here's one of the most poignant passages from "Democratizing the tools of production", one of three forces that make the tail important

What sparkled blogging was, again, democratized tools: the arrival of simple, cheap software and services that made publishing online so easy that anyone could do it

For bloggers, podcasters, beat makers, artists, the advent of cheap/free tools opened up a whole new world of expression and exposure (think of Danger Mouse's work on the Grey Album and which led to his current gig with Cee-Lo as Gnarls Barkley)

The book is not without its critics. This morning I talked to a VC guy who wasn't at all convinced. For one thing it's such a buzzword, as in "roll you eyes, not this again" type of buzzword people throw around. I also checked out a wsj.com article (good luck finding that) that questions whether products in the long tail really sell, maybe they are just attention getters that help sell the hits (the example was a bus service running 24 hours doesn't really get used after midnight but it boosts ridership)

Still, Anderson is a great convincing speaker even if some of the references are dated (indie record store). He can be funny (and it's a crowd of stiffs). The slides were great (maybe not this one), in particular the bar charts of store vs actual available inventory

Random notes

• we've been looking at culture through the lens of mainstream hits (the head) but the tail is going to be more and more relevant
  
• the power of the long tail is about discovery and findability
• check out Seth Godin's Small is the new big
• hits are not going away, they are just going to be smaller
• the best stuff for some things are in the tail
• we all have at least one interest (passion) that will make us want to dive in the tail

Q&A

• there is a play for vertical engines that will counteract the dominance of aggregators
• rise of organic (grassroots) vs synthetic (manufactured) hits
• fractured society, diminished common culture

It seemed like Anderson didn't have time to hang out (he lives in Berkeley) as the staff was trying to rush the book giveaway. Getting it signed was a bit of a zoo, I had to leave anyway but it would have been cool to stay and chat

Flickr set


Golden Gate University is located downtown at 536 Mission (bet. 1st and 2nd), one of those city postgraduate schools for busy professionals (business, law, tax), this was pretty cool