In _Here Comes Everybody_, Clay Shirky has a lot to say (and a number
of graphs) about the relevance of what he calls power law
distribution which describes a lot of online behaviors (human
behaviors?), of which 'the long tail' in just one...
It's a terrific book, by the way.
Miriam Bobkoff
presently at Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal Library
Port Angeles, Washington
webpage: http://klallamlibrary.blogspot.com/
catalog: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/elwhaklallamlibrary
At 07:02 PM 5/21/2009, you wrote:
>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
>--
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
>------------------------------------------ http://shelter.nu/blog/ --------
Received on Thu May 21 2009 - 22:23:43 EDT