Chris Anderson and Longtail Theory

Chris Anderson 

In statistics, a long tail of some distributions of numbers is the portion of the distribution having a large number of occurrences far from the "head" or central part of the distribution.

There are three different ways that Long Tail Theory can be categorised into.
1) What is the size of the Long Tail
2) How does the availability of so many niche products change the shape of demand?
3) What tools and techniques drive the shift and which are most effective?

When consumers are offered infinite choice, the true shape of demand is revealed. And it turns out to be less hit-centric than we thought. People gravitate towards niches because they satisfy narrow interests better, and in one aspect of our life or another we all have some narrow interest (whether we think of it that way or not).

 

The shift from hits to niches is a rich seam, manifest in all sorts of surprising places. This blog is where I'm going to collect everything I can about it.