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By Chris Anderson, Random House Business Books UK, July 2006
‘Anderson's insights with the long tail influence Google's strategic thinking in a profound way.’ Eric Schmidt, CEO Google
‘A terrifically impressive analysis. It captured the forces underlying this business perfectly.’ Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon
‘The Big Idea of 2006’ -GQ
‘A brilliant and important book –as i-intelligent as it is e-entertaining’ -Robert Thomson, The Times
The phrase The Long Tail was first coined by Chris Anderson in a 2004 article in Wired magazine to describe certain business and economic models such as Amazon.com or Netflix. The term long tail is also generally used in statistics, often applied in relation to wealth distributions or vocabulary use.
Asiaing Links:
The Long Tail Blog by Chris Anderson
The Long Tail UK Official Website
Download the eBook (Excerpt, Pdf, 1.2MB)
Book Description:
What happens when there is almost unlimited choice? When everything becomes available to everyone? And when the combined value of the millions of items that only sell in small quantities equals or even exceeds the value of a handful of best-sellers?
In this ground-breaking book, Chris Anderson shows that the future of business does not lie in hits – the high-volume end of a traditional demand curve – but in what used to be regarded as misses – the endlessly long tail of that same curve. As our world is transformed by the Internet and the near infinite choice it offers consumers, so traditional business models are being overturned and new truths revealed about what consumers want and how they want to get it. The world of books has been transformed by Amazon; the record business has been transformed by iTunes and Rhapsody; a similar transformation is coming to just about every industry imaginable. Wherever you look, modest sellers, niche products and quirky titles are becoming an immensely powerful cumulative force.
Chris Anderson first explored the Long Tail in an article in Wired magazine that has become one of the most influential business essays of our time. Now, in this eagerly anticipated book, he takes a closer look at the new economics of the Internet age, showing where business is going and exploring the huge opportunities that exist: for new producers, new e-tailers, and new tastemakers. He demonstrates how long tail economics apply to industries ranging from the toy business to advertising to kitchen appliances. He sets down the rules for operating in a long tail economy. And he provides a glimpse of a future that’s already here.
External Links (From Wikipedia):
The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson, Wired, Oct. 2004
"Power Laws, Weblogs and Inequality" by Clay Shirky
"Voiceless: Blogging from the Long Tail" by law professors Andrew Chin and Jay Kesan
"Zipf, Power-laws, and Pareto - a ranking tutorial" by Lada A. Adamic
The Long Tail Blog by Chris Anderson
Long Tail Search by Michael Duz
"Search's Long Tail" by Danny Sullivan
Profiting from obscurity from The Economist
"Consumer Surplus in the Digital Economy" by Erik Brynjolfsson, Jeffrey Hu, and Michael D. Smith, November 2003
The Rise and Fall of the Hit by Chris Anderson, Wired, Jul. 2006
Tyranny of the Power Law from Econophysics Blog
Interview with Russ Roberts, Library of Economics and Liberty
Interview with Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit
About the Author:
Chris Anderson is Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine, a position he took up in 2001. Since then he has led the magazine to five National Magazine Award nominations, winning the top prize for General Excellence in 2005, a year in which he was also named editor of the year by AdAge magazine. Previously, he was at the Economist, Nature, and Science magazines. He has worked as a researcher at Los Alamos and served as research assistant to the Chief Scientist of the Department of Transportation. He lives in Northern California with his wife and four children.
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