Why Long Tail content is different

Charles Mann, one of my favorite writers (dating way back to our Science days), writes with a great perspective on why the nature of content changes as you go down the Tail. He quotes David Foster Wallace from his famous essay (found in "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again") on television:

TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.

Comments

[Al Abut]

Sorry, where does he write this? Google's giving me no love.

Love the new blog and congrats on the book.

[hypergene]

i'd like to read Mann's piece, as well, but am having no luck finding the article you mention.

[triticale]

I've seen the quote before. Isn't there a similar one from a Russian playwright about happy and unhappy families?

[rob]

While it's probably true that content "down the tail" is going to be different, it's not strictly because it's down the tail that it's different, it's because its audience is different.

Content out on the tail is directed specifically at those who share a particular, unusual interest. It's not meant to have broad appeal or even to make converts. It is simply directed at those who share the interest.

Content in the center of the bell curve can share this characteristic and sometimes does. Television, a for-profit medium driven by advertising, must appeal to as many people as possible. A blog about, say, NASCAR, is not very far out on the tail of the curve, but it's still aimed at a fairly focused group.

[Michael Bernstein]

Al, use Amazon's 'Search Inside' function to look for the word 'vulgar'. The quote is on page 37.

[John I.]

Yeah....nice point :)

[Sorrel]

I wasn't sure I got the long tail thing.. then I read that quote and suddenly it all made perfect sense. Cheers for that.

[here]

This is so true and for the most part, the lowest common denominator rules the media and the markets surrounding the media.

The long tail is more like the record collector who hunts for LPs in the deepest darkest holes.