Declaring the ‘Long Tail’ Dead

Re:Declaring the ‘Long Tail’ Dead by mattmaroon on Thursday May 21, 2009 @10:38AM (#620494)

"What is really puzzling is that the backlash against Anderson’s ideas has taken this long to happen."

Umm, it didn't. Almost as quickly as his book was published, everyone pointed out that the data sets he based his theory on were deeply flawed, and in fact proved the opposite. He admitted so on his own blog.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Declaring the ‘Long Tail’ Dead by davidmathers on Thursday May 21, 2009 @11:49AM (#620618)

He admitted so on his own blog.

I remember him saying that the new data didn't really change anything and explaining why the long tail idea was still valid.

edit: This is what I was thinking of: http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2008/06/excellent-hbr-...

So in the data she cites, the head of the online music market represents 32% of the all plays, and the tail represents 68%. That's certainly no challenge to the Long Tail theory; indeed, it's even more tail-heavy than the data I cited in my book (probably because I used a more generous estimate of 50,000 tracks for Wal-Mart's inventory).

[ Parent | on HN ]