The Long Tail

what is `the long tail`? In 2006, Chris Anderson, editor of the wired magazine, published his theory- a description of the way that the internet has transformed economics, commerce and comsuption. Anderson was not setting out to write a book for media academics and students, but because his most significant examples include Itunes, you tube and social networking sites like facebook, interest in the book spread quickly, via world of mouth in academic circles, which Anderson calls Viral marketing, and references to the long tail have been a feature of much writing about the changing nature of the media since- including what you are reading now.

The theory of the long tail can be boiled down to this:
Our Culture and economy are increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of hits (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve, and moving toward a huge number of niches in the tail. In an era without the constraints of phycical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly targeted goods and services can be economically attractive as mainstream fare.