The Wrong Tail - How to turn a powerful idea into a dubious theory of everything:
Chris Anderson's The Long Tail does something that only the best books do—uncovers a phenomenon that's undeniably going on and makes clear sense of it. Anderson, the Wired editor-in-chief who first wrote about the Long Tail concept in 2004, had two moments of genius: He visualized the demand for certain products as a "power curve," and he came up with a catchy phrase to go with his observation. Like most good ideas, the Long Tail attaches to your mind and gets stuck there. Everything you take in—cult blogs, alternative music, festival films—starts looking like the Long Tail in action. But that's also the problem. The Long Tail theory is so catchy it can overgrow its useful boundaries. Unfortunately, Anderson's book exacerbates this problem. When you put it down, there's one question you won't be able to answer: When, exactly, doesn't the Long Tail matter?
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