What is the Long Tail?

I've been struggling to come up with a pithy definition of the Long Tail, something longer than a bumper sticker and shorter than an elevator pitch. So I'm going to give it a few goes here and perhaps you, the wise participants in this conversation, can tell me which resonates most (note: some of these are my own, others are stolen from other people's attempt to define it). Pithy construction and TypePad layout flexibility allowing, I may offer the winner a permanent place at the top of this blog.

A) The Long Tail is the infinite shelf-space effect--the new mass market of niches that rises when the existing bottlenecks in distribution that favor hits are removed.

B) The Long Tail is the myriad of niche products whose collective market share can rival the blockbusters.

C) New efficiencies in distribution, manufacturing and marketing are resetting the definition of what’s commercially viable across the board, turning sub-economic customers, products and markets into economic ones and creating a Long Tail of demand.

D) The Long Tail is about the economics of abundance—what happens when the bottlenecks that stand between supply and demand in our culture start to disappear and everything becomes available to everyone.

E) The Long Tail is the story of how formerly sub-economic products and customers are suddenly becoming the biggest market of all.

F) None of the above. Please try harder.

Comments

[Mark]

D comes closest for me. If you can stand a little advice from an old (but not yet grizzled) former newspaper editor: simplify, simplify, simplify.

Great idea, great blog. Every time I read it, it makes my head hurt (but in a good way).

[Nick Douglas]

E works best for me.

[Mike]

I vote for D. Seems the clearest, and the least "slogan" like.

[Mike Kerrigan]

I'd have to go for 'F'. All the definitions you offered explain how new technologies are allowing the Long Tail to be exploited without explaining the Long Tail itself. The Long Tail existed before there were more effective methods to satisfy (some) of the demand it contains. There's a reason why there's enough 80's hair band music around to fill a Tower Records music store; the music from bands that didn't achieve mainstream success still had enough of a following within the Long Tail to make producing an album or two seem worthwhile.

The Long Tail exists within a broad range of human interests. Arguably, everything from art through food tastes, even politics and religion have a Long Tail within them.

I don't know if I have a great definition for the Long Tail to offer, but since I've rejected the others, I should give it a shot:

'The Long Tail comprises the almost infinite variety of human interests and desires that mainstream offerings cannot fully satisfy.'

[Rob Clark]

When discussing the concept of The Long Tail with friends and associates, I've actually been using a phrase from your Dec. 23rd entry, "A small number times a very big number equals a big number".

It gets the point across immediately, and from there I can move on to talk about methods, technologies, variations and opportunities.

[John Thacker]

The Long Tail is (how technology is) combining the efficiency of mass production with the variety of custom craftsmanship, leading to everything being available to everyone.

[dthree]

None of those really resonate, since I have to agree with Kerrigan that they describe the technolgy better than the effect. I will give it a shot:

The long tail is the market sector that appears when a retailer uses new technology to simultaneously increase both the product selection and the potential customer base by an order of magnitude or more. This allows retailers to connect more customers to a wider variety of products, finding profitability in everything down to the least popular available.

[dthree]

I got a new one I think might be better:

Which is better, selling 1 Britney Spears CD to 1,000,000 people or selling 100,000 different, obscure CDs to 10 people each?

[Jaxon Rice]

I think the answer lies in the simple version of "D".

"The economics of abundance"

[Al Abut]

Rob Clark: "When discussing the concept of The Long Tail with friends and associates, I've actually been using a phrase from your Dec. 23rd entry, 'A small number times a very big number equals a big number'."

Good Lord, me too and I didn't even realizes that's where I lifted it from! That's the phrase I used when I blogged that the long tail effect wasn't just for buying stuff and that the private donations for the tsunami have been staggering just for this reason. And it neatly solves Mike Kerrigan's observation: "All the definitions you offered explain how new technologies are allowing the Long Tail to be exploited without explaining the Long Tail itself".

If you want even shorter and pithier (think like a marketer), how about "The Real New Economy" ;)

[Jim Treacher]

I think Don Henley said it best: "Everything, all the time."

[Jim Treacher]

(Life in the vast lane?)

[ed nixon]

All of the candidates containing "sub-economic" are non-starters for me. What does that mean?

And, did you know that something about your weblog software, my browser (Mozilla) and everything in between seems to disable the direction, Home and End keys in this window? Editing web forms is hard enought already.

Cheers. ...edN

[Joshua Wood]

I like D the best. I think of the Long Tail as Reaganomics in reverse. It Trickles Up.

[NickL]

Good comment. Trickle Up Economics is pretty good.

All your options above are too long, in my opinion.

[Alan Levine]

Sorr, but "F"... all the choices focus on marketing economics, when it is really a phenomena of networks.

But I guess in marketing a book that is the target.

[Another Mark]

I'd vote for a bumper sticker:

Your current logo (distribution graph showing long tail in yellow) with half of your text at (E) beneath it, "...how formerly sub-economic products and customers are suddenly becoming the biggest market of all."

Hyperlink this to an elevator pitch with links in turn to the Wired article and later book. Also add a backlink to the blog. I like (C) best as the beginning of the elevator pitch.

This way, when I drop the phrase "long tail" in an online conversation, I can easily give folks a way to drill down as deep as they want.

Thanks for thinking about this--I often come across websites with good ideas, but that just take too much digging before the audience can "get it".

[Mark Wubben]

My vote goes out to "A small number times a very big number equals a big number". It perfectly explains what the Long Tail is about... can't think of anything better.

Ed, the page has a rather long sidebar, so if you use the `End` button you'll go to the bottom of this sidebar, but you no longer see this post.

[Zagrev]

I have to agree that the current definitions talk about the why, not the what.

G) The Long Tail is the portion of the market (demand) that is not being served by the hit products.

[Henrik Torstensson]

I think that Zagrev's G) definition does a really good job explaining what The Long Tail is.

[ken]

I'd go with a variant of D, but shorter.

The long tail is:

"The efficiency of abundance."

[Robert Young]

Long Tail = Digital x Network (or Viral) Multiplier

[Noah Brier]

Lots of great ideas here. Here's my best shot, which tries to incorporate some of the comments people made. (I chose to include lots of different words because I'm not quite sure which to use.):

The Long Tail is the other 80 percent of information/data/goods/the world, which before digital technology was near-impossible to archive/store/sell/distribute effectively.

Hope that's useful.

[Frank Ruscica]

IMHO, you should focus on the benefit conferred, via an intuitive analogy.

One possibility:

The Long Tail: The Minor Leagues for The Rest Of Us.

Hmmm...

This is not really optimal, though, as it fails to capture the LT's profoundly inclusive and meritocratic nature...

Hope this helps...

[kip]

I like D, but it doesn't quite capture the idea that it's lots of little guys buying lots of little stuff. dthree nailed it:

I got a new one I think might be better:
Which is better, selling 1 Britney Spears CD to 1,000,000 people or selling 100,000 different, obscure CDs to 10 people each?
Posted by: dthree | January 6, 2005 11:42 PM

...and even then, it's (the collective power of) a hundred small companies selling a thousand cd's to ten people each.

Great blog, great concept, great read.

ps what kind of animal is a log?