Long Tail Theory

Graphs

Notes

Long Tail Theory - Chris Anderson, 2006

•  About sales of a product over time
• Highest point of a chart: very popular, all at once
  > e.g - TV Dr Who Christmas episode
• Slope: popularity decreases over time
  > goes down to a few purchases in a month / 1 view
• Online stores can make more money out of small volume sales of the millions of individual niche products, than out of their higher volume sales of a much smaller number of mainstream products.
• Online digital stores (e.g - iTunes) can stock millions of tracks on their servers. They can provide both mainstream products and a huge number of obscure/niche products.
  > Cater for the long tail of the market as well as mainstream

David Gauntlett

•  "Web 2.0 allows us to become producers as well as consumers of the internet."
• "Web 2.0 allows us to collaborate and participate with each other."
  > CCP - Creativity, Collaboration, Participation