The Long Tail 290
Chris Anderson writes "I'm the editor of Wired Magazine and if you'll forgive the autohornblowing, I think you'll be interested in my piece in our latest issue. It argues, with a lot of new data, that the entertainment industry is shifting from an era of hit-driven economics to one of niche-driven economics. Content that was once relegated to the fringe, beneath the threshold of commercial viability, is now increasingly able to find a market in distributed audiences, marking a shift towards the previously-neglected Long Tail of the demand curve."
More Democratic Market (Score:5, Interesting)
A notable exception was Red Dwarf, which many people recommended as the next Hitchhikers, as good as Hitchhikers, etc. I found the two books to be like they said, but perhaps not as they intended, I found Red Dwarf to be very derivative and fairly juvenile, as if someone really loved a book so much that they wrote in a similar setting (sci-fi in this case.) I didn't pursue it past the two books I was given, it was a bit of a downer, too as the authors had a small group of characters to play with after killing off the entire human race and finding bugger all in space.
I've had satellite radio for two years now and can tell honestly say I don't listen to current pop anymore, as I've found swing and standards to be awesome music, it's a bit puzzling how music evolved from that to Britney Spears, et al, but as The Long Tail indicates, we're leaving a top-down dictation of our musical tastes and finding our own way, whether in the past or in the present but other genres than commercial radio wants us to hear (and buy.)
Years ago I moved to Santa Cruz, which has the Nickelodeon and Del Mar [thenick.com] theaters. I've found about 3/4 of the films I watch are there rather than the big hollywood multiplex (Santa Cruz 9) down the street. I'm more surprised and intrigued by what I see on those screens (which included Touching The Void) than the shiney, candy-like offerings from down south. I can't say I'd have had the same choice in the city I moved from, where no such independent cinemas existed, shy of driving 125 miles to the Maple Theater in Troy, MI.
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:2)
You are confusing Britney Spears (BS?!) with a musician. She is an entertainer. Nothing more, nothing less.
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:5, Insightful)
You could say the same of Frank Sinatra or Bobby Derren. Why does their music have impact and BS doesn't?
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:5, Insightful)
But there's certainly nothing wrong with Britney Spears if you're into her. It's what someone likes...and the "music" is really secondary to BS or others of her ilk. It's the entertainment that's the draw.
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:2, Insightful)
But there's certainly nothing wrong with Britney Spears if you're into her. It's what someone likes...and the "music" is really secondary to BS or others of her ilk. It's the entertainment that's the draw.
Right, but on radio, there's little of Britney to see (clothed or otherwise) whereas I'd say Sinatra, Derren, Ho
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:5, Insightful)
My metric for this is "would this person be entertaining if you gave them a microphone and a couple of acoustic instruments to back them and sat them down on a stage?" And in the case of nonvocal music, it's a question of whether the music itself is sufficiently enjoyable to stand on its own merit. If neither of these metrics are met, then it may be entertainment but it's not really music. And some pop songs are decently catchy and enjoyable, in *spite of* the singer behind them - you can have a great songwriter or producer behind an otherwise mediocre talent and still come up with something that sounds pretty good. And I can appreciate those songs for what they are, but still dismiss the singer as worthless.
THANK YOU. (Score:2, Insightful)
WARNING: Shameless plug!
Our band uses no vocal sculpting - all but one of our songs was recorded in one take. Al
Re:THANK YOU. (Score:2)
And no, that's not even on anymore. They don't play music on M(usic)TV anymore. Even VH1 is getting out of that.
Re:THANK YOU. (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:THANK YOU. (Score:2)
You sound more like a producer/tech...which is great, don't get me wrong...I mean you make yourself (in this forum) seem like that. But next time, just on a lark, take your admitted "horrible" guitar skills and play it anyway on a track. The history of rock is littered with "horrible" guitarists that actually elevate the art! It's one of those things t
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:2)
No, it's something wrong with you, then.
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:2)
I think you're drawing a distinction that isn't there. It's not musicality vs. entertainment. It's all entertaining. It's not hard to find it as entertaining to watch someone do something skillful (Jimmy Page) as it is to watch someone who's ideas are the entertainment (Dylan was a lousy singer and a pretty bad musician).
Music as an art form can be appreciated from differ
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:2)
How many of the singers on Frank Sinatra's duets collection recorded in the studio with him?
Answer: None.
Sinatra's music was fairly manufactured. I think you'll often confuse him with the musicians who wrote his music.
Who is Bobby Derren?
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhm. You know there were 8 TV series (seasons) of Red Dwarf done by the BBC, along with a movie that's in production, right? The two books only cover a part of the first season. The first 4 series are on DVD now, so go hit your local library or DVD rental store and check it out.
You know how films rarely live up to a book? (Score:2)
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:2)
IMO, the first two seasons of Red Dwarf were excellent. After that, they got a following, a budget, had to make some cast changes, abandoned any shred of continuity, and became boring. (But stayed popular enough to have 6 more seasons. So what do I know.) But t
autohornblowing (Score:5, Funny)
On the contrary, i'm quite impressed by your agility, even jealous.
Re:autohornblowing (Score:3, Funny)
Re:autohornblowing (Score:4, Funny)
Re:autohornblowing (Score:2)
The long tail is already here (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in college I was a record collector. I would spend hours upon hours trolling every used record store in the Bay Area looking for obscure items on my 'must have' list. Whenever I visited a new city, I would always try to hit some used stores, regardless of the weather or the character of the neighborhoods they may be located in. I also spent nearly as much time in used book stores looking for anything that struck me as interesting at the time. Over the course of the years and several cross country moves I've shed most of the books and all of the vinyl. My cd collection has plummeted from several thousand down to a few hundred. And yet I now have access to more literature and music than ever.
I've been using iTunes for over a year now, and I've bought more music in the past 6 months through iTunes than in the entire 3 years prior to the release of iTunes. I don't spend much time listening to whatever is on the top 40 charts. Most of the artists I like live in the long tail. They are often even names you might know, but they are not chart toppers. They won't go platinum, but they'll still make money. I worked at a used CD store in Colorado for a while, and the owner there understood the long tail even though he didn't understand it as such. When people were selling us CDs he would just look at the titles and be able to tell you what it was worth without even looking it up on the computer. Here's a tip for you: you can always get top dollar for a Frank Zappa CD.
Already posted on my blog, but what the hell.
Re:The long tail is already here (Score:4, Funny)
How? Were you slipping goatse printouts in the liners?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The long tail is already here (Score:2)
According to a story appearing in the St. Louis, Missouri Globe-Democrat in 1895:
Re:The long tail is already here (Score:2)
Not meaning to be all indie or anything, but if I were to start listing long tail bands I'd start with Trans Am, Hem, and Negativland and start working my way out towards stuff like Ritchie Hawtin (Plastikman), Shellac, and Rondellus.
I've not been particularly lucky finding any of that on iTMS, which is why I don't use it.
I'm the editor of weerd magazine and (Score:3, Funny)
this weeks feature story is "Broadband is faster than modem dial up"
Re:I'm the editor of weerd magazine and (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course his objective in doing so is to generate page hits but if he does provide us with an intesting article and doesn't make a habit of it unlike some other submitters I don't really mind.
It could be worse. (Score:2)
He could have copy'n'pasted other news sites' content to his own blog, added some banner ads to make money, and then sucked michael and CmdrTaco off so they would post anything he submits as "news" [slashdot.org].
Really, Roland needs to become an editor, or at least be given his own category. He can astroturf for cash all he wants then, and we'll be able to ignore his stories.
If you're going to post articles here .... (Score:4, Funny)
Primer (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh yeah, it's being released in Dallas and New York on Friday. More cities to follow.
Re:Primer (Score:3, Interesting)
If it's a niche movie, it'll probably be on the local indie screen soon.
I hope it's better than some of the stuff I've heard about being good, which wasn't, i.e. Young Einstein and Blair Witch.
Films I did love watching were:
Triplets of Bellville
Run Lola Run
Monsoon Wedding
Shaolin Soccer
Touching the Void
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
All of which were at the local indie theater
Re:Primer (Score:2)
Who told you Young Einstein was good?
Re:Primer (Score:2)
Re:Primer (Score:2)
interesting article (Score:5, Insightful)
The Wired Rule of Content (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Wired Rule of Content (Score:2)
hmmm... that experience sounds familiar...
I'm not convinced... (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess we will see how things turn out. I'm not saying the article is wrong, I'm just saying 'the business' will have to change.
Re:I'm not convinced... (Score:2, Insightful)
Indeed. Just bear in mind that many of those misses only exist because the people who had millions felt pressure to push out some sort of product, rather than dedication to an idea.
Most movies, games and even music are manufactured in the same manner that thingamabobs are manufactured, simply because the machinery exists and needs to be fed.
Trimming the pyrite doesn't at all imply a proportional trimming of the gold. They come from different mines.
KFG
Re:I'm not convinced... (Score:3, Interesting)
In 2 ways:
1) It is now easier and cheaper to reach your audience across the globe. In the past, it might not have been profitable to create a $1M movie about, say, gay cowboys eating pudding (ref. Southpark) and sell it to the US niche market. These days however it's not that much harder to reach the same niche market on other continents. In other words, the 'tail' has grown considerably fatter wit
With due respect... (Score:5, Interesting)
There's only 20 spots on the best seller list. There are generally more than 20 good books that have come out recently. Quite a lot of really ambitious, deserving stuff is out there, that gets ignored in favor of "what everyone else is reading." You see similar trends in music, movies, etc.
Sure, there are a few critics who went down the road less traveled, found something new, and held it up and said "hey! this is pretty good." And people listened. But has that really created a wider market?
Sure Into Thin Air did well. And now that author's other book is doing well. Great. So, name me one author (or one book you've read) on Skydiving. Mountain biking. White water rafting. You say "well, there aren't any." My point is "how would you know?"
The net here, is that we've still got popularity that's driven by what's getting recommended as "the new hot thing." And, like lemmings, people flock to it. The mainstream has fairly limited bandwidth.
If nothing else, this is proof that there are a lot of reasonably well-written books out there, that a lot of people might enjoy, and picking one at random and giving it the star treatment can make it a success.
My favorite experiment on this--Stephen King (in his preface to "the Bachman Books," a collection of works he pubslihed under the alias "Richard Bachman." These were published without fanfare, under a name no one knew. About as well written as any of his other books, just less well known. They didn't do poorly per se--they did all right, but nothing like his "Stephen King" books. And, once he was unmasked and people knew he had written them, all of a sudden they turned into MUCH bigger sellers....
It's still a question of marketing hype.
Interesting article (Score:5, Interesting)
I want the article to be right, but it seems more like a hope than any evidence. Amazon, Netflix, etc are selling/renting a lot of material that traditional stores don't stock, but it doesn't seem like it's indicating any great shift.
Amazon was most dramatic as far as how far much of their sales are of items not stocked at normal book stores. But that just makes sense; if I can buy the book at a brick and morter store I will because then I get a chance to see it, read a bit of it and be sure I like it. Once I've done all that, I don't want to wait a few days to get it from amazon just to save a few percent, I want it right away, so I'll buy it at the store. If I can't find the book in normal stores, then I'll look at amazon.
Re:Interesting article (Score:2)
We are seeing this happen with Netflix for one simple reason. Longterm Netflix users don't get the more popular titles after a while. They are then given a title that is further and further down the list which ends up being something that is out of the "top 3,000". It's gr
Re:Interesting article (Score:2)
Re:Interesting article (Score:2)
That's odd. (Score:2)
Wired Subscribers Anonymous (Score:2)
It's ok, Jason- we all make mistakes, but at least you've come out and admitted you have a problem, and that's the first step.
Who's next?
Re:Interesting article (Score:2)
Good time for Canadian Movie Makers (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmmm Maybe it's time to get the Panasonic 24 fps DV cam
Re:Good time for Canadian Movie Makers (Score:2)
The entire concept of 'Canadian' movie/music/programming-of-any-type is really outdated. If a singer
More Wired pseudo-science (Score:3, Interesting)
And I don't like the style- it comes off as scientific (Ohhh! It even has GRAPHS! That must be science!) but really is just a bunch of gross generalizations. This kind of crap is what keeps me away from wired.
Though I do appreciate the mention of MP3.com as a long-tail only failure, there are significant issues with respect to business plan specifics that are completely glossed over yet are central to the success Anderson talks about. If Touching the Void weren't reprinted with a vengence, then the resurge wouldn't even exist.
Also, lets talk about the major underpining of Netflix that allows it to "over throw the tyrrany of space"- the US postal system. If Netflix couldn't send the disks cheap enough, fast enough, or had more broken DVDs than they do, they would be out of business.
In short, this whole article reminds me of a DotCom pitch- full of colorful and modern-styled graphics, long on exposition, but with holes.
demographics and buying habits (Score:5, Interesting)
If people stop buying what the stars are wearing/using and don't respond to peer pressure, then buyers will fragment and the long tail will rise in importance.
Re:demographics and buying habits (Score:5, Funny)
Won't happen here in France. When I walk through the streets around 1/2 people are wearing "Von Dutch" t-shirts. I'm seriously considering paying President Chirac or Koffi Annan to wear one in public, in the hope that they will then be considered uncool and consigned to the bin.
Phillip.
Re:demographics and buying habits (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's become cool to say 'I don't do what other people do' (not to mention containing almost lethal levels of irony), kids might say that. And then go out and buy what their favorite star wears anyway. Maybe they don't think that's what they're doing, I'm sure there's all sorts of rationalizations in their head. But I'd like to see
So the moral of the story? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Summary of Greg Barton (Score:2)
Get a life, d00d.
A completely digital product has great agility. (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank God ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thank God ... (Score:2)
Very interesting article (Score:5, Interesting)
Porn is the cultural touchstone (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's self-promotion back at you (Score:5, Interesting)
Thus Wired became the "Cosmopolitan" of the internet revolution, with the sole difference that the faces on the cover are ugly.
I quickly droped my subscription and none of my tech friends read it either. In fact I can't recall when was the last time I saw an issue of the magazine.
I thought (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I thought (Score:2)
a former prof of mine was being interviewed by wired and they wanted to take his pic. but....they wanted to put someone else's head on his shoulders. (had to do with his book)
at any rate, i thought they rasterbated over all their photos because they were too cheap to hire good photographers. turns out they do hire decent photographers but rasterbate over their images anyway.
Re:I thought (Score:2)
Phillip.
I Am Not Being Shifted, I Am Being Forced (Score:5, Interesting)
"So what?" you might ask. Well, the problem here is that there appears to be only so many formulas that main stream Hollywood can produce. So, all that sensory overload is starting to become the same thing over and over again. How many firefighter movies do we need? Obviously one more since Ladder 49 found its way in theatres. And, if you have seen it, you will find (besides the way it ends) that it lacks originality in almost every facet of its existence. Same thing with Shark Tale. Get down to it, its just a gangster movie with a kids front put on it. I am not the only one who has noticed this, either. Most in my group feel that most every movie formula has been done to death by the movie industries. Look at the movie Taxi coming out soon. Go and rent the likes of National Security or Lethal Weapon and you will see basically the same formula.
This is where the indie industry is coming to the rescue with their niche titles. Its why your Napolean Dynamites are doing so well while main stream stuff is struggling to stay in theatres for any length of time. Its why Donnie Darko has such an underground following where as Armegeddon is considered loud crap by many.
This, of course, extends down to the rental businees. People are hungry for entertainment and these niche titles fit that bill to a tee. I, for one, am glad we have a Netflix that is able to provide the alternatives to the Grade A blockbuster crap from mainstream studios. Otherwise, I think I would have given up on the movie industry a long time ago.
Re:I Am Not Being Shifted, I Am Being Forced (Score:2)
Could it also be that while Bay/Bruckheimer are off doing the minimum necessary to ensure a blockbuster according to their marketing studies and formulae, the person making a movie like M
I agree (Score:2)
But Blockbuster can only carry so many movies, and hardly any are the ones I want to see. I have 200+ movies in the queue and think Netflix will be around for quite some time, because they embrace diversity wholeheartedly and I can wait a day or two for some really obscure movie in the mail.
Re: I Am Not Being Shifted, I Am Being Forced (Score:3, Interesting)
And to some extent, that's a fair point. Of course, that's assuming that they promote the less formulaic stuff as hard, which I'm not sure they do. But the unusual films tend to get pigeonholed as 'art house' or whatever, and don't get as popular. Look at something fascinating and original like Being John Malkovich, or Cube, or even
Re:I Am Not Being Shifted, I Am Being Forced (Score:3, Insightful)
I try to watch movies that I like. I rarely go to theaters because it's a waste of money. I rarely by CDs because as an entire album they're a waste of money. I try to enjoy the television shows, music, and movies that interest me.
Who cares if half of my generation is being brainwashed by MTV or Miramax? That's their problem, not mine to worry about.
I've alwa
Self-referential (Score:2, Informative)
It's a fringe-content article on Slahdot about pushing fringe content to distributed audiences through alternative channels! I was surprised that it didn't use itself as an example!
For a far better analysis of the issues, see "The Perils of the Imitation Age" by Eric Bonabeau in the Harvard Business Review June 2004.
Ok article, but not great (Score:4, Insightful)
However, the article did not need to be as long as it was. The same point was repeated over and over, and although there's nothing wrong with presenting evidence, I thought, "Ok, I get it." The article also had that high-school-position-paper feel to it. I would have preferred to see more facts and a little less dissertation.
Not so for everyone (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless (Score:2)
Unless you are the part of the fringe that wants the original unedited Star Wars trilogy released on DVD. In which case you are SOL.
Under Distributed Movies List (Score:3, Informative)
Basically I just look at the weekly box office for each movie divided by the number of screens squared and that tells me how much acceleration the market is placing on the distribution channels for the movies.
It works pretty well. Playing the Hollywood Stock Exchange [looksmart.com] with this metric does a pretty good job of detecting bargains.
The "long tail" as it applies to products. (Score:5, Interesting)
With today's technology, it is possible to profitably release a product that looks like it came from a "big player" in the industry, but is manufactured in batches of a few hundred, as orders permit. This gives us tremendous flexibility to create and customize new products based upon a central core.
My point? Its not just music and publishing that are being morphed by technology. Its also software -- think of all the shareware and open source projects that have dramatically changed the landscape of the software industry.
Makes sense. (Score:4, Interesting)
Cable comes along and adds a few more channels, at a lower distribution cost. Some local unaffiliated stations become "superstations" (TBS, USA I think, WGN), and a few niche players develop (most notably MTV, VH1, CMT, and eventually TLC, Discovery, etc). But remember the old cable boxes? They had a cap of about 36 channels, so there was no room for diversification, only replacement of one interest with another.
Cable began to broaden as TV sets came cable-ready, adding broader interests again, but the floodgates have really opened with the advent of digital cable and satellite. Now, the incremental distribution cost of a channel is marginal. Channels number in the hundreds, and more unusual interests can now be explored - think Discovery Health, VH1 Classic, TechTV, Game Show Network, etc. The distributers are still limited, but those limitations continue to fall as cable providers find ways to squeeze more bandwidth out of their lines and satellite adds capacity in the sky through new satellites and better (or just more) compression. The new limits are becoming simply the ability of the channel to remain profitable, and provide their channel at a price the dish and cable services find profitable as well. Content is getting cheaper as media has become near omnipresent. We have channels on local Atlanta cable - Falconsvision and Comcast Sports South. Both capitalize almost entirely on previously recorded and produced content, repackaged. By aggregating existing content, they're able to provide something that distinguishes them from the satellite providers, and is easily a profitable endeavor.
I see this trend stalling for a while as increased capacity is used for distribution of the same content in higher resolution (HD). This pause may be quite drawn out, depending on when the consumer decides that the image is "good enough". (There is little demand, for example, for higher resolution digital audio. I don't think 1080i is the end of the upgrade cycle for video.) Alternately, a new distribution channel (easy to use internet-based channel surfing) may accelerate this growth, but this seems unlikely for quite some time - with ~15 Megabit/s plus bandwidth requirements for compressed HDTV, it will be a while before the average home is able to receive content at a resolution that can compare to current TV technology. More hindering is the lack of a broadcast mechanism for the internet (one source, unlimited listeners within a certain range). A PC with gigabit ethernet would only allow 66 HD concurrent viewers, provided the hardware could keep up. This tech needs to cheaply scale to hundreds of thousands to become practical.
Agree with the idea (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been doing this in my professional life, too. I'm a developer of Meridian 59 [meridian59.com], a classic online RPG. The game focuses a lot on player vs. player (PvP) combat, with the advantage of having a long time to develop a very balanced system. We've targeted the game to the niche that is interested in this type of game, and we make enough money to get by.
I think we'll see another large, sustainable boom once people realize that servicing a niche can be very profitable.
Have fun,
Re:Agree with the idea (Score:2)
Two different effects (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems as though Mr Anderson is describing two different effects here, though they both spring from one root cause: the advent of large Internet-based stores with low overheads which have an effectively national (or even global) market.
On the one hand, there is the 'long tail' of the curve, that is, the sale of many different items, each of which sells in low volume. These are the niche products which most people will never have heard of.
On the other hand, he describes the impact the new economy has had on bringing niche products into the mainstream, making them big hits.
His first example (the success of the book Touching the Void) is really of the second type. It's not an example of the long tail at all, but an instance where the new economy has thrust an obsure book into the mainstream. This is really not essentially different to the very familiar case in which an artist, scientist, etc. is only appreciated long after their original work is produced --- only after some comfortable context has been provided in which to situate the work.
So how does this affect me? (Score:2)
BTM
I've been expecting this (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no American teen sound and hasn't been for years, and the music business model hasn't really changed since the days of American Bandstand. A musician who might do perfectly well on his own selling 10K records a year at $5/profit per record isn't helped by the industry to sell 20K or 50K, he's dumped by the label and out of the nusic business.
Remember heavy metal? It's fragmented into a number of subgenres as different as chalk and cheese.
I'm sure this is going on in lots of markets that I'm not even remotely familiar with.
How can gigantic entertainment monoliths get their ears into enough sub-markets to find the most profitable players? Well, automated analysis of P2P network downloads is one possibility, but they're paying for it while they are trying to make them illegal.
This is the content industry's ultimate long-tern problem, and if they don't solve it, no amount of DRM and anti-technology legislation can save them.
He almost got it right (Score:4, Insightful)
He states "That leaves the costs of finding, making, and marketing music. Keep them as they are, to ensure that the people on the creative and label side of the business make as much as they currently do.". But just as new technology is opening up new avanues for media distribution, it's giving us completely new ways to produce and market that media. A band can now cut an album and put it online using inexpensive equipment. A good band can now get promoted online through word of mouth. No need for expensive A&R men, no need for payola on the radio, no need for any of the services traditionally provided by the record companies. As technology gets better, the film industry is being changed too. A special effect CGI that cost millions to do just 15 years ago can now be accomplished on a desktop computer.
The point is, just as changes in technology are changing the economics of distribution, they are changing the economics of media manufacture and promotion. This is a great thing.
Quoted the article twice today (Score:4, Insightful)
I've lived through 30+ years of overhyped predictions about the future, starting way back when with The Greening of America. But there's a big difference between a book/essay that's trying to shape the future by exhorting its readers to make the future that way and one that is slightly more objective and says that it thinks things are developing in such a way as to come to this predicted future. I mention all this just to say "I hope that I won't be fooled again."
And that I think what these various authors say is most likely true: there seems to be an inevitable democritization of media/commerce that allows for the Long Tail, whether it be in newspapers, bookstores, blogging, music stores or whatever. All seem to have the common thread of better too much than too little, better too all-inclusive than too exclusive. From what I've seen they are right and we might, I hope, all gain from it.
I just wish I could figure out how to make a good living from it.:-)
Why I like Wired (Score:4, Interesting)
Reasons:
Is there some stuff that I'd like to see? Sure. I wish the articles were longer, and that there were more of them. I wish that the number of graphics-intensive, full-page 2-paragrpah articles was a little smaller. Apart from that, I wouldn't change anything.
As far as the tail goes, we have more choices because our larger retailers (online and otherwise) are able to make so many more diverse choices in terms of what they want to (and can) sell. The supermarket is a good example. As years went by and people learned more about regional cuisine, and fresh/organic vegetables, retailers became pressured to supply these items because they were losing business to these little niche shops and mom&pop veggie-fruit stands. When organic veggies first showed up in my town (15 years ago), you just didn't have enough of them being grown to allow a major grocery to buy the stuff. As production of organics rose in volume, they became part of the ordinary offering. In dense urban areas (London, Paris, NYC), the range of choices was always wide and varied because of the diversity of the population was similarly wide and varied. I see the diversity of today's channels of information (cable, the net, books, papers, magazines) as spreading demand out along the tail. The choices were always there, it's just that people are more likely to know about them, and getting exactly what one wants is easier in the age of fedex.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Informative)
'Cause none of us read the articles anyway...
Re:Why? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
But then i read the article and, lo and behold! it was actually interesting.
Not all advertising is evil.
Slashdot has to pay the bills too (Score:2)
Dear Mr. Anderson (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks for posting an article to Slashdot that might possibly be of some interest to those that read it. Of course, the fact that you're the editor of Wired magazine means that many of the holier than thou slashdotters will now take the opportunity to tell you how much they dislike your publication, how irrelevant it is, how many cooler publications they've read etc.
Some may even go so far as to suggest that they have the opportunity to fsck actual chicks with both stolen and non-stolen dicks (see parent above).
God forbid, you may have actually posted this article because you frequent slashdot and thought it might be interesting to those here.
Re:Dear Mr. Anderson (Score:2)
In short, Wired is technology as fashion.
Re:Dear Mr. Anderson (Score:2)
Re:Dear Mr. Anderson (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dear Mr. Anderson (Score:2)
But yeah, it's sometimes fun to dish out the techno-snobbery - hell, I don't have much else to be snobbish about, so why not.
Re:Dear Mr. Anderson (Score:2)
inversions (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong Wired. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If you are going to Auto-horn-blow... (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, what would the difference have been if I had seen this article on their website and submitted it a