Apr 17 2009
The Long Tail End of Web 2.0
Web 2.0 might have invaded our consciousness and the very business of our lives but to many of us, it is still wrapped in fairly muddled definitions. Using Wikipedia as an example may shed some light but to many of us, there are still answers that remain out of reach. What is known and agreed upon is that Web 2.0 is a highly dynamic environment, which actually fits the fact that it can be difficult to define. There are also patterns that indicate Web 2.0 exhibits Long Tail characteristics, something you and I should thank technology for.
What is the Long Tail?
The Long Tail refers to the phrase that was first coined by Chris Anderson in his speech series beginning in 2004. It refers to a feature of certain statistical distributions that show high frequency populations being followed by low frequency populations which tail off gradually. This feature is also known as heavy tails, Pareto tails or power law tails. The tail refers to the long extension in a demand curve. Put simply, the Long Tail reflects the volume of low-popularity products which exceed that of very popular ones.
The Long Tail in Web 2.0
To demonstrate how Long Tail appears in Web 2.0, let’s consider blogs. Blogs began life as personal journals of people who were unafraid to share them with other people. People posted everything from their favorite movie list to their Southeast Asian vacations to their marital woes. But blogs soon took a life of their own and pretty soon dominated a good portion of the Internet to become the force that it is considered today.
Blogs are a good example of the Long Tail in Web 2.0. They are small sites but their number help make a good bulk of the content found online. They evolved from being a personal message to becoming the must-go-to resource for advice, recommendations and even specialized knowledge. And people flocked to them either as users or as content providers. Soon, businesses started noticing the potential of these blogs and began using them for their own ends. And the rest is history in the making.
Significance of the Long Tail in Web 2.0
Web 2.0 Long Tail requires using content that are less popular and providing them to users. Although that may seem ironic, it actually is quite practical. This type of content has failed to find a following simply because they were unavailable or were just too difficult to access.
Offline, this problem is confounded by physical limitations of space. If you have a 30 square meter booth selling books and CDs, for example, it would be very difficult indeed to fit 150,000 titles in there. With Web 2.0 technology, however, this is not a problem. Online businesses such as Amazon, eBay and Barnes & Noble can ‘stack’ hundreds of thousands of items without worrying about space or the lack of it. Furthermore, companies can provide digital content, an offer so difficult to resist considering it’s fast, convenient and works like its physical equivalent.
It’s probably safe to say that Web 2.0 has proven the Long Tail really does exist and actually works. Coupled by technology that grows more reliable by the minute, Web 2.0 has made it possible for businesses to thrive and exhibit the Long Tail curve. By enabling reliable access to products and services previously unavailable to consumers, Web 2.0 has created an environment where virtually anything and everything can have value.
Here is where this lesson ends for today. We really hope you enjoyed this lesson too.
You will receive the next lesson in 7 days. Next week’s lesson will have the following title:
“Can the Internet Sway Your Vote? Web 2.0 and the Iowa Caucus”
Copyright(C) 2009 by John Delavera & Reimund Lube
