Skip to main content

Close
Get the best research tool on the web today,and free!
Connect with people with common interests!

saved by3 people, first byDaniel on 2006-04-03, last byLainie McGann on 2008-05-13

  • The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
  • We sold more books today that didn't sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday.
  • The key factor that determines whether a sales distribution has a Long Tail is the cost of inventory storage and distribution.
  • The long tail is the colloquial name for a long-known feature of statistical distributions (Zipf, Power laws, Pareto distributions and/or general Lévy distributions ). The feature is also known as heavy tails, power-law tails, or Pareto tails. Such distributions resemble the accompanying graph.
    In these distributions a high-frequency or high-amplitude population is followed by a low-frequency or low-amplitude population which gradually "tails off." In many cases the infrequent or low-amplitude events—the long tail, represented here by the yellow portion of the graph—can cumulatively outnumber or outweigh the initial portion of the graph, such that in aggregate they comprise the majority.
  • In these distributions a high-frequency or high-amplitude population is followed by a low-frequency or low-amplitude population which gradually "tails off." In many cases the infrequent or low-amplitude events—the long tail, represented here by the yellow portion of the graph—can cumulatively outnumber or outweigh the initial portion of the graph, such that in aggregate they comprise the majority.
  • In many cases the infrequent or low-amplitude events—the long tail, represented here by the yellow portion of the graph—can cumulatively outnumber or outweigh the initial portion of the graph, such that in aggregate they comprise the majority.
Print