“Legs, wings ... The main thing is the tail!”
(m / f "Wings, legs and tails")
Summary in one line:
Tail → Tail Applications → Future of Tail → Tail on the Internet → Tail on Web 3.0

Tail

The Long Tail ("long tail") - an established term, which came from statistics and economics. It was first used in October 2004 by Chris Anderson in an article in the Wired magazine [1] . The article notes: for many new economies, the significant impact of sales of specific, niche products is characteristic, and, moreover, the profit from their sales is comparable to the revenue from sales of bestsellers.
Almost always in niche economies, sufficiently supported by demand, you can build a successful business. Anderson gives some examples. 57% of all book sales of the Amazon online store are “non-best-selling” books, which are absent in most “offline” bookstores. 20% of movies rented on Netflix on DVD do not go on the big screen and are not sold in regular stores. Moreover, the total cost of little-known goods may turn out to be orders of magnitude higher than the cost of the “hits”.

Tail applications

So, the theory of the “long tail” is as follows: modern culture and economics are surely shifting from sales of a small number of “hits” (products and markets of the mainstream) at the beginning of the demand curve to a large number of specific, niche products in its “tail”. Such trends are also present in music sales (iTunes, Rhapsody, etc.), and in television and video on demand (TiVo, YouTube, etc.).

Of course, such distributions (in the theory of probability, the Pareto distribution [2] ) existed before the Anderson paper. For example, the frequency of words in fairly long texts and the distribution of the population (a small number of "cities-millionaires" and many suburbs, settlements and small cities). Anderson was one of the first to popularize it in relation to new economies, the Internet era, if you will, Web 2.0. More documented examples and illustrations of the theory of the "long tail" can be found in the book "The Long Tail: More". Funny, a book about niche and non-mainstream products and markets has become a bestseller :)

However, the list of possible applications of the “long tail” model can be supplemented with many other businesses, markets, content types. Similar demand distributions are typical for computer games (for example, GTA IV against the market of specific flight simulators), for printed periodicals (New York Times against Communications of the ACM), and for websites (for example, Yahoo portal against personal stanichi Vasi Pupkin), and for blogs (someone from the top of the Yandex blog rating against the “regular” blogger).
Even the distribution of Google search queries (of course, other search engines too) consists of a small number of similar popular queries (“download mp3”, “Barack Obama”) and a huge number of rare and specific (“How do I patch KDE2 under FreeBSD”).

Tail future

In Anderson’s article, “rules of new media economies” are formulated. There are only three of them.
Rule # 1: Make the full range of products available.
Rule # 2: Divide the number on the price tag in half. And then also lower it.
Rule # 3: Help the consumer find what interests him.
Compared to the past decade, it is now much easier to create music, video, text, or any other kind of media content. At the same time, available distribution channels appeared. These two processes have already ensured the fulfillment of the first rule. Reducing the cost of creating and distributing content allows you to perform the second. However, this entire range will be useless if the user does not get to it.
So what about the third rule? Amazon has, at a minimum, a recommendation system. (Do you like the book The Long Tail? Perhaps you will also be interested in Wikinomics or Marketing to the Social Web.) Tired of music on radio, MTV and other mainstream and pop music? It’s not for me to explain to you how to use Last.fm, Rhapsody, XM (or anything else). Tired of television and new American blockbusters? In my mouth, my feet Flag in your hands with TiVo, BBC iPlayer, YouTube, Netflix, iTunes Movie Rental (keep yourself, I'm tired). Want to buy something that is not in other stores? Feel free to go to eBay.

Interestingly, eBay, which sells mostly what cannot be found in regular stores, does not provide the user with “smart” recommendations like Amazon or Last.fm, although the portal also has a search and category system. The reason, Anderson believes, lies in the absence of the need for such recommendations — users themselves create descriptions of the goods they sell, they themselves provide the logistics of transactions and know what they want to buy. The "administration" of eBay does not even need to know the entire range of goods circulating on its site.

Tail on the internet

Thank you for reading up to this point. And now - the most interesting.
Very rudely and brutally imagine the evolution of media content, which was discussed above:
• Radio → Many radio stations → Digital and online radio
• Records → CD → CD and MP3
• Cinema → Film and video tapes → Cinema and DVD → Cinema, DVD, VoD
• Television → Many channels → Digital and interactive television
• Books → Books, audiobooks and e-books
It is seen that at the current stages of development, all three Anderson rules are fulfilled. And now let's digress from the new (and in fact - evolved well forgotten old) types of multimedia and turn to our friend, the Internet:
• Web → Web (portals and search engines) → Web 2.0 (portals, search engines, social networks, ...)

Just in case and in order to avoid: in this case the term “Web 2.0” is used in the meaning defined in the Wikipedia article [4] . The term "Web 3.0" will be understood in the following as a set of directions for the development of the web in the future.

Since the beginning of the network, the number of sites has grown. The web has become big, overgrown with content and has survived the era of the dot-boom. The first rule. The network is becoming more accessible. The second rule. Gradually improved technology. Graphics, audio, video, flash, interactivity, etc. help the first rule in capturing the second to capture an even larger audience. The web is ubiquitous, renamed Web 2.0. There is a general socialization. Content is more and more accessible. “One” is done. “Two” is done.
What about the third rule? And nothing.
Do you want to find any thematic site? You are welcome! If he is known - this is not a problem. If they do not tell IM friends, the first 2-4 pages of search results will come to the rescue. And if the site is little known or need specificity? If the search query failed? Long tail is lost.
Want to keep up with the latest technology news? You are welcome! Read engadget, gizmodo, digg, etc. Do not have time to read everything and filter the interesting to you personally? Long tail is lost.

Personally, I have a desire to find interesting (for me) content more than a reluctance to deal with moderate amounts of not so interesting or completely uninteresting content. Therefore, I read http://habrahabr.ru/new/ . Analogy. If two or three advertising messages per month fall into the mailbox - it is not so bad; the case when the spam filter once a year mistakenly finds a rather important letter as spam much worse. However, I do not read Digg. Alas, it is too difficult (by time) to filter. A good overview comparison of Digg and Habrahabr can be read in [5] .

Approximately the same is the case with blogs. If an interesting blog is not mentioned on the forum you are visiting, it is not discussed in your favorite social network, if it is not a blog of a friend of your friend's colleague, then the chance to stumble upon it is by chance very small. Filter technorati, etc., or long tail is lost again.

Tail to Web 3.0

Want to get interesting content? Think of working content filtering mechanisms. For the user, they can look like an algorithm for selecting interesting topics, studying user content assessments, as a set of personal recommendations based on analyzing user profiles with similar preferences, as an expert system for recognizing pupil movements of eyes or anything else. But the web needs a third rule.
Conventionally, we will call this concept the Personalized Content Delivery Platform. Moreover, the content can be anything - sites, blogs, separate blog entries, articles of online publications, etc. Alex Iskold expressed thoughts about the impossibility of commercial use of the tail in relation to many blogs [6] . However, the monetization of such a platform is quite possible. When paying for digital television packages, not only the cost of producing video content is paid, but also services and services for its delivery to the final consumer.
I don’t know when the semantic web will come, when there will be IPv6 everywhere, I don’t know the official start date of Web 3.0+ and I have no idea if the future web will be completely 3D. However, I’m sure that personalized filtering mechanisms (or, if you will, discoveries) of endless tons of content will be in great demand in the foreseeable future.

To "read"

[one]. Chris Anderson. The Long Tail .
[2]. Wikipedia article on Pareto distribution .
[3]. Chris Anderson. The Long Tail
(translated as: Chris Anderson. Long tail. New business model.)
[four]. Wikipedia article on Web 2.0 .
[five]. alex_blank . Digg vs. Habrahabr .
[6]. Alex Iskold. There's no money in the long tail of the blogosphere .
(translated by sunnybear as: There is no money in the long tail of the blogosphere .)
Thanks for attention.