I’m consistently amazed at how the ideas we read about seem so intuitive in hindsight, yet at publication time were probably cutting edge and/or controversial. I’ve heard vaguely about the Long Tail and Free ideas before, but after reading more into them, I have developed a profound respect for Chris Anderson. The man gives new meaning to the phrase “he wrote the book on…”
Stepping away from my new-found man crush on Chris Anderson (he has huge…ideas!), the Long Tail and Free concepts really just make perfect sense. We’ve known for centuries that mankind is infinitely complex — one human being alone is given to endless permutations of thoughts, desires, and actions. Multiply that by 6.7 billion and you get…well you can do the extrapolation.
The beauty of the Internet era, and of the Long Tail and Free concepts, is that they are the natural manifestation of the human consumption machine. We have circumnavigated the confines of physical space, and therefore even the smallest of niches have a place (“Have a place,” for the purposes of this discussion, means “can be catered to.”) in the Web world. The result is that a “long tail” of products, merchandise, and abstract goods has emerged to satisfy the whims of pretty much anyone and everyone.
The Free idea is perhaps a bit frightening to all those entrepreneurial spirits out there. After all, if everything is headed toward zero, who benefits? Anderson points out that “digital technologies have become too cheap to meter,” and thus the business of business will have to change. Money-making enterprises will have to adapt to all the things we truly value, says Anderson, and those things go well beyond the traditional ideas of value. The development of the three-way market gives rise to a business approach that emphasizes the importance of cross-subsidies. It’s the basic idea of advertising, only dramatically redesigned for the Web.
Scale is the integral concept behind the Long Tail and Free ideas. The Internet has given rise to a global communications infrastructure that doesn’t play by any rules, and has no regard for limits. Abundance — not scarcity — is the new paradigm, and the Web’s tail will do what nature designed tails to do in animals: stabilize the moving beast, even if it is moving toward zero.
