The Long Trail of Baloney

Another pillar of Web 2.0 is crumbling. It looks like The Long Tail is just a tall tale.

The Long Tail theory, developed by Wired editor Chris Anderson, proposed that the web made it possible to make more money selling niche products to niche markets than selling hit products to a mass market. In other words, Amazon could make more money selling erudite books to humanities majors than selling The Da Vinci Code to beachgoers.

According to The Wall Street Journal...

"Since appearing two years ago, (The Long Tail) has been something of a sacred text in Silicon Valley... If you demurred, you were met with a look of pity and contempt...

A new study by Anita Elberse, a marketing professor at Harvard's business school, says not so fast.

"...Prof. Elberse looked at data... and discovered that the patterns by which people shop online are essentially the same as the ones from offline. Not only do hits and blockbusters remain every bit as important online, but the evidence suggests that the Web is actually causing their role to grow, not shrink...

...Some of the reasons for the popularity of the Long Tail were as interesting as the idea itself. For one, it flattered its readers, many of whom were in the tech industry, by suggesting (yet again) that the Internet was changing everything..."

Regular readers of TAC may remember back to last September when we wrote The Long Tail and The Fat Head in which we said...

"As usual, a whole lot of marketing people with low reading comprehension have completely misunderstood (The Long Tail.) They think it means they should focus their marketing efforts on trying to sell their products to light users or non-users in their category.

I have dubbed this phenomenon The Fat Head. The Fat Head states that only a fathead would waste his marketing dollars trying to sell golf balls to tennis players.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of fatheads."

Coming next week...
Debunking another bonehead pillar of Web 2.o -- the "conversation."