Feature: The Long Tail and the new media marketplace

Rest assured, things have been happening since the previous post, just not online.

Allow me to introduce you to the Long Tail, the underpinning idea for the feature article I'm working on currently for Humber's Mag World:

Think back to your first memories of the Internet, around 1995 or '96. Remember the rigid formatting, neon backgrounds and absolute lack of functionality found on the average abomination passing itself off as a website? Me too.

Nowadays, everyone is well aware of the mammoth progress the Web has made in becoming the revolutionary force it was hailed as during its ascent into the mainstream in the mid-1990s.

We do so much online that the Internet no longer merely augments the the real world, large tracts of our physical activities have moved into more virtual environs. Think about the amount of people that bank online now, or get their news; the Web almost certainly factors into even the most conventional person's media sources.

The chart to the left (courtesy of Economist magazine) shows how many blogs have burst forth into existence since they began tracking this in 2003 - 25 million at the beginning of 2006!

As you may or may not be aware, Technorati is now tracking over twice that volume -- 55 million active blogs. This isn't an isolated phenomenon, its a revolution (er, or is that evolution?).

Blogs are but one example of how the so-called Web2.0 is reshaping media demand, as it intices consumers to stray further from mainstream content toward a world of niches.

The problem is, how best to conceptualize this new structure of demand. Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired, provides some clarity: The Long Tail.

Anderson articulates the concept of the Long Tail in his book, which you'll find a link to on the righthand side of the screen. Or you can check out Anderson's blog for some background.

In the article, I'll try to shed some light on how the dynamics of the Long Tail hold deep implications for magazine publishers (as well as the rest of Old Media). I've only begun trawling through my research, and haven't vetted my notes enough yet to give an in-depth explanation here.

But briefly, the Long Tail idea says that with the broadening base of non-traditional information and entertainment sources found on the Web, old guard media is in decline (think YouTube vs. Warner Bros., or Rolling Stone vs. a hundred blogging superfans also at the same concert).

Major media firms are losing marketshare to these medium, small, and mirco-competitors that comprise the lower end of the product demand curve, or tail (see graph below).

Through the democratization of the means of production and distribution (because costs continue to fall through tech. advancement), these smaller players are increasingly siphoning off the bread and butter of Big Media -- consumer eyeballs and the ad dollars chasing their wallets.

In aggregate, Anderson shows, there is an almost equal amount of value in the tail, comparatively, with the head. What's more, demand is increasingly shifting away from the head, down the tail, as these niche players improve content and gladly offer it up on the cheap, even freely (motivated by the 'reputation economy,' a buzzword for a later post).

I contacted National Post media critic Warren Kinsella two weeks ago to bring my article closer to home, and he's managed to succinctly cobble together the idea better than I in his column from Feb. 15.

Kinsella was working on a similar story (the Spin interview) when I contacted him with the idea, which then found its way into his column; he gave me my due props during the interview, crediting it to "some weird ESP thing happening," (or maybe media folks are collectively beginning to click in?).

At any rate, it's a work in progress that I'm pretty excited to polish up and get into Mag World. Alongside Mr Kinsella, popular culture prof. Mark Federman at the University of Toronto has aided me immeasurably, and I'm looking forward to an upcoming interview with Naomi Angel, senior editor of Capital Mag -- one of those 'tiny giants' Anderson says will thrive in the new media marketplace.

Like I said, the wheels are turning ...

Check back around mid-March for the finished product.

-JS

“Almost anything is worth offering on the off chance it will find a buyer.” -
Chris Anderson and a maxim of Long Tail economics.