The Long Tail

After reading the Long Tail Blog it gave me a better understanding of how many different opinions there are out there in the world and how many of them blog about them. I was never into blogging before and never really understood why some people took part in it. However, now I know that they are used for people to express their opinions about certain issues or topics and have other people comment on them and put their two senses as well. The article in generally was very interesting. At some points I found myself glued to the screen because it was so interesting and at other times I found myself just wanting to skip to the next paragraph because of the dryness. There was a lot said in this blog and I wouldn’t say that I agreed with one hundred percent of it but I definitely agreed with the overall message.
I think that this theory of the Long Tail will affect Advertising for the Internet because now that some people have read this a lot of people will have a different outlook on how they are spending their money and how far their money actually goes. If they know they don’t have to pay 99 cents for a song on iTunes then they probably aren’t going to anymore which will decrease the sales in general. Towards the beginning where the blog went on to say that the twentieth century was all about hits and the twenty-first century will be all about misses, I think was a little far fetched. I don’t think there is really any way that people can predict that or not. A lot of it is based on chance. A movie is only shown in theaters if it gets 1,500 viewers in two weeks. They take a lot of chances with that and risk involving a lot of money on the chance that they actually will get 1,500 people.
A little later in the blog it goes on to say that there are 6,000 movies that are submitted to the Sundance Film Festival and only two hundred and fifty five were accepted. Of those two hundred and fifty five movies, only twelve were picked for distribution. I liked the argument on that study where the Long Tail says why not just pick all two hundred and fifty five of those movies, put them on DVD and discount them. There is a lot of time and money being wasted on evaluating these movies rather than actually releasing them. I think the blog brought up a very good point. Why go through that whole process when the blog even stated that most of the time, hits make money, but so do misses. Not everyone is going to like the same twelve movies that are picked to be released and they won’t know the money they are missing out on if they keep the other two hundred and forty three movies not available to the public.
Another interesting point that the blog brought up was the fact that stores only sell what we want. Or what we think we want. Certain stores make us believe that if they don’t carry it or we’ve never been introduced to it, then we don’t need it. If we wanted items, they would definitely be sold at all the stores. I think this is very true because if someone goes into Wal-Mart or Stop and Shop or wherever, if the brand that isn’t there that we prefer we are forced to settle for a different brand and we realize that okay this store doesn’t carry it so I don’t need it anymore. Certain things don’t get as much recognition as they deserve. Just because the overall population dislikes something, doesn’t mean the rest of us won’t like it either. The Long Tail discusses how if there is enough “non-hits” on the “tail” then the market will be bigger than the hits. I couldn’t have said that better myself. Everyone just goes along with the flow and with what is popular and “in” at that particular time. Everyone is so afraid to branch out and go against the “popular” things in life. If everyone realized this, the “non-hits” would be more popular than the actual popular hits.
“The biggest money is in the smallest sales.” I find this quote to be very true. Just like The Long Tail says, if things cost less people will buy more. So why do we overprice things that could be at a lower price? I think a lot of people have just stopped arguing with that fact and accepted it. No one is actually challenging it and The Long Tail was the first thing I ever heard about that is in fact challenging it. I think the blog brought up a lot of good points. A little dry and boring at some parts but the overall message was very interesting and fun to read about.