It was off-topic, and in retrospect I probably shouldn't have posted it. I've heard many enthuse about the "long tail" and was intrigued to learn of research suggesting it was a myth. I was also intrigued by the author's suggestion that the tendency of the observed distributions to produce a very large "head" may be a manifestation of what we commonly call "culture".
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries on behalf of Alexander Johannesen
Sent: Thu 5/21/2009 4:37 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] The long tail
On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 01:34, Ed Jones <ejones_at_nu.edu> wrote:
> It seems it was a nice theory, but the reality of user behavior-both in
> the legal online music market and the illegal P2P market-paints a
> different picture.
What different picture? The long tail theory came about due to -
amongst other things - increased music sales for items of lower price
outside the promoted peaks, in a way to explore the cultural flow of
items. In fact, libraries have known about this for years, but
unfortunately without telling anyone else about it (or making them
care).
Alex
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Received on Thu May 21 2009 - 22:05:21 EDT