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You are hereIs the "Long Tail" just a Tall Tale?
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2008-07-02 11:28
A new article/study by Harvard Business School Professor Anita Elberse challenges the validity of the Silicon Valley mantra/theory that the Internet created a new "long tail" of demand for niche products that would ultimately undermine and overwhelm the offline trend towards "big hits."
Why this is such important new research is that much of the Silicon Valley 'pixie dust' that fuels so many of the new business models involving social networking, crowdsourcing, etc. is predicated on the "Long Tail" book/theory by Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson.
What this new reality-inducing research from Professor Elberse does is it gets us to wonder if the latest Silicon Valley narrative to sell us on the potential of their Internet innovations, may not be eerily similar to the the Silicon Valley hype of the Internet's infinite potential in the late 1990's which contributed to the devastating tech bubble and which destroyed $4 trillion of Americans' wealth.
Bottom line: If the long tail ultimately proves to be untrue or less true than the Silicon Valley hypesters represent, it undermines the case for Silicon Valley's public policy menagerie of: net neutrality, white spaces and copyleft -- which are all predicated on the assumption that the net should be neutral -- meaning the playing field must be leveled by hindering the big players that generate big hits and serve mass markets, so that the net can enable the long tail, niche producers' Internet democracy and free speech.
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