I’ve been reading lately The Long Tail book (by Chris Anderson) during my free time. The book talks about how the digital era is changing the sales patterns of hits and non hits songs (media productions in general).

The author explains the invalidity of the retail store 80/20 rule with 20% of the products responsible for 80% of the revenue. And how online stores such as amazon are making more money by selling more of non hits songs.

The Long Tail of web 2.0

I’ve been seeing the same Long Tail pattern in web 2.0 applications. People are no longer using one mainstream website such as Friendster. Instead, they are scattered throughout the internet using a plethora of niche applications such as LinkedIn, 43things, ma.gnolia, etc.

I totally agree with the author’s theory that the mass culture is fading, and being replaced by a series of niches. And thats why I think big hits websites are going to loose their traffic gradually to non-hit/niche websites.

I think Yahoo, Google and amazon were the first to realize the “Long Tail” effect on the web.

Yahoo for example has been actively acquiring small startups such as del.icio.us, flikr, upcoming, etc. to create their series of niches.

Google on the other hand has been very successful opening their APIs to developers while encouraging them to create their own niches.

amazon who has probably the biggest experience leveraging the long tail to their advantage has been opening their webservices to allow anybody to sell amazon products on their websites or blogs.

The book made me feel better about the way I approach web entrepreneurship. Especially that I’ve been criticized for stretching myself very thin by constantly creating more projects such as ThingICanDo, TagMyCity, Ximda Consulting .. and more coming soon ;)

My philosophy was always similar to “The Long Tail”… Create a series of niches rather than creating a one big hit.

Any thoughts?? ….