Latest read: The Long Tail

I read about Chris Anderson’s Long Tail in Wired Magazine back in the day (2004 – wow how time really flies) and immediately recognized the Amazon story. Chris turned that article into a book: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. Pretty compelling for the opening chapters…but then it just rehashes itself over the last four or five chapters. His website provides the surface overview that fits the needs of the book. NYTimes book review

How many books can you tap into at a local reseller? Two or three thousand? Try competing against Amazon’s millions of titles. Overwhelming only to their competition. Anyone in Toledo remember Thackery’s bookstore? I do — and still miss that store every time I visit. It was a hangout when I was off campus.

Once able to purchase your own unique tastes in music, movies, television shows and books (for example) the idea of a retail store just turns into a sink hole.

Retail locations justify selling only the top 100 popular titles in music, movies, TV and books to pay for electricity, staff and rental space. Clearly this model is broken. Your given few selections, and the limited selection is forced to mass audiences — but not your own niche interests.

Today on in the internet you can find any niche, regardless of age and download it to your computer. Sadly the only thing standing in the way of a massive long tail is copyright.

While Walmart can outsell at fixed locations based upon pricing for the top 100 DVDs, Netflix will fill your niche filled with thousands of opportunities that Walmart cannot cost justify.

The example of “The Long Tail” that works best: iTunes

Chris mentions this many times in his book. First iTunes and the iPod simply helped changed the game. Anytime anywhere with access to single track purchasing.

Travel to your favorite music storefront in your town and how many titles do you have access to? And how do you purchase? You buy the entire CD on the shelf (head) often for the single track (tail) you want. The buyer is stuck paying for tracks of no interest.

Enter the iTunes music store which permits you to find your own specialized taste in music AND permits you to browse thousands and thousands of songs (a very long tail) all around $0.99 cents.

The issue that is essential to understand iTunes vs. traditional retail music stores: The song sits on a server and is simply downloaded repeatedly. No physical materials to duplicate or cut into profits – actually the ROI for the music industry is at its zenith….biggest profits yet.

Today when you purchase products at Amazon, you may in fact be purchasing from a manufacturer’s warehouse not even owned by Amazon. Yet your purchase is managed by Amazon. That is a big effect of The Long Tail for resellers — keeping products out of your warehouse and staying at the manufacturer who now ships directly to the customer via your web store. This is simply the next step (its a big one) for retailers. After all Amazon’s own call is “The Earth’s Biggest Store”

Now lets apply The Long Tail to our education system. Or the Chinese will.