The Long Tail Wasted

The newspaper industry somehow has been reluctant acknowledge they have a long-distance audience outside the geographic market defined by their print edition. The long-distance audience is their long tail.

According to empirical research based on the U.S. data (Sylvie & Chyi, 2007), online traffic from outside the market accounts for about 50% of total page views and minutes a newspaper site gets. In terms of unique visitors, the outside-market share ranges from 27% to 35%. For some Asian newspapers, I believe the percentages are even higher.

Just like what Netflix did with Bollywood films, the Web provides a natural platform for newspapers to go beyond their geographic constraints and reach users worldwide (in big numbers). But newspapers did almost nothing for these users, who are probably the most loyal users among all.

Therefore, the long tail is wasted and you ask why the industry is dying?

Human + machine = best search results

I love tools that give good recommendations! As both in “The Long Tail” and in “From Niches to Riches” when more products are available, it is hard for consumers to locate the product they are interested in. I wish I could find some other examples rather than books (cause they talked about amazon.com so much already), but I was playing with UT library site the other day and under a book I searched for, I saw tags (labels) showing up. It is supported by Library Thing.

I went to Library Thing website. It is a website that you can search for books. Each book is tagged by website members and you can see there are “members” of the book. I haven’t registered yet, but am guessing anyone can become a member of a book? You can see the list of members and each member has a profile and his/her own library. Pretty interesting site.

The problem is google is probably not enough (I like delicious.com, but it is still not enough). Googlezon in epic2014 is probably ideal for consumers. When you find a web page, there’s gonna be a recommendation says: people who like this page also like……

If someone can beat google on that part and use that search engine on every website, is google gonna die? (or become the second yahoo?)

one customer who buys can be better than 100,000 site visitor who doesn't

I thought this tied interestingly in with a point that I mentioned in my presentation Wednesday. With the advent of the web, people who launch web sites don't need to be seen my millions or billions of people. If their site is visited by just a handful of people (thousands, hundreds or maybe even dozens) who turn around and buy from them (or click the ads, or whatever), they can still be wildly successful.

The Washington Post reposted an article from the technology blog TechCrunch.com entitled "Blogger And Podcaster Media Network Looks To Turn Long Tail Blogging Into A Full-Time Job", which ties into the long tail concept as well as others we've been talking about this semester.

The founder of Blogger and Podcaster Magazine (who and which I personally had never heard of) has started the Blogger and Podcaster Media Network, which will help blogs with smaller audiences become financially lucrative. Enrolled blogs will get packages from communications and public relations service PR NewsWire. There will be an affiliate program and the group will help secure more advanced ads with combined purchasing power.