Pattern Cognition

Yesterday a co-worker and I were debating the pronounced death of the Long Tail.  While the debate still goes on (he brought up some excellent points that I’m working on a response), I thought I would post my response to his question (based upon an article on the Register), is the concept of the Long Tail dead?

My response:  No, not yet, consider these points.

Point 1: comparing digital distribution to traditional retail distribution needs a different scale.  Why?  Because in the digital world the range of downloads/purchases may be a single song to the entire CD.  Of course in the retail world you must buy the entire CD.  Thus if I really want Vanilla Ice’s new comeback song, I have to buy the entire CD at Borders.  On iTunes, I can buy the one song that will launch him back to fame and fortune he so richly deserves.  Not to mention I don’t have to face any humans face to face on iTunes and wouldn’t be ridiculed publicly, as anyone should be that even contemplate such a purchase in the first place.

In the article they equate 4,000 CDs of a typical retailer containing 52,000 songs = the “head”.  And the 52,000 songs are deemed the “head” in the study.  But that doesn’t make sense.  It is the actual songs that are downloaded that matter and the study is comparing CDs to individual songs.  Think of it this way; online the “head” is actually 13x larger than the non-online world.

Point 2: Who are these people?  Who actually purchases the most popular download that comprise the head?  I surmise, and have absolutely no empirical evidence to back it up, that newbys to the digital online world of musical distribution are the ones buying the top 40 stuff.  And they are more likely to listen to what is “popular”.  They are not the early adopters, they are the mass-middle.  I surmise, again with no empirical evidence, that people that are a little more tech savvy have, um, other ways to procure music vs. online music sites like iTunes.  So the nature of who buys may flaw the study.

Point 3: This study does not consider other forms of legal music distribution (i.e. streaming) that could skew the results. Online stream services like Pandora or Last.fm are hugely popular and growing in popularity.  Although listeners have the option to purchase music, the vast majority only listen rather than purchase (speculative – citation missing here).  And many of these listeners are busy discovering new artists and music.  So who are these people?  They are the early adopters who tend to shy away from Top downloads.

Point 4: Can you generalize music purchase patterns to  an entire economic theory?  Maybe, but you have to consider what I call attention commitment.   I’d be more interested in book sales where involvement with the product is higher, not to mention purchase prices.  With higher involvement, people may make wiser choices. Plus, a book requires a lot more sustained attention commitment vs a crappy Vanilla Ice song (sorry, redundant term).

Point 5: To Chris Anderson, you’re welcome!

michaelsevilla Social Economics chris Anderson, economics, itunes, Long Tail, online music

Despite a crazy valuation based on eyeballs, Facebook has always struggled to monetize their user base on the growing social platform.

So how does the poster child for online communities decide to make a buck?  Sell your profile data.

To their credit, Fb did try advertising, but too many of its users focused on friending rather than paying attention to Fb version of lame ass banner ads.

We’ll see how much intrusion the FB audience will handle.  A decent amount of information is already available for Fb users.  A key point will be to what degree market researchers methods intrude and ratchet up the creep factor.  Then again, Facebook users aren’t exactly known for being, er, discrete.

michaelsevilla Online Communities facebook, Online Communities, Social Software

This is great.  Just what the Russian space program needs to develop international support.

Somebody better warn SETI, I’d hate to see them accused of baiting E.T. just for Russian target practice.

michaelsevilla Too Funny to Be True alien encounters, Cosmonauts, SETI

Just watched Merlin Mann’s (43 Folders fame) presentation from MacWorld.  What struck me about his presentation (one needs to be patient with his rambling style) was the level of thinking he’s done around the idea of creativity and the reproducible nature of it based upon patterns.

Specifically about when it is appropriate to edit vs create.  Based upon his reading of Twyla Tharp’s book from 2005, there is a time to create and a time to edit. While this is not what I would call net-new, the way he explained resonated with me.

By confining editing to the editing process, you are free to explore and live with the sometimes inherent and often present ambiguity of ideas, thoughts, and connections.  To be free from censorship (even self) is critical at this stage as you look for new connections.  Once the creative process is done, then it is time for editing; here you can allow yourself to be ruthless.

michaelsevilla Creative Process Creative Process, Tools