Keep wagging the long tail. 
While I was away from The Social Software Weblog for a few days, my friend and fellow blogger
Barb Dybwad blogged a few posts for me. One, most notably, on the
‘long tail’ and how it relates to social
software.
Joe Kraus, a founder of Excite and Architext, has a blog—Bnoopy, An
entrepreneurship blog—wherein he writes and shares a
presentation (a PPT file) on his
experience with the long tail of
software.
In this post Joe asks and answers the question: Why did Excite go out of business? Quite simply: ”...We couldn’t figure
out how to make money from 97% of our traffic. We couldn’t figure out how to make money from the
long tail
– from those queries asked only once a day…”
A good read on the long tail that Joe mentions is this
one by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, who
coined the term “the long tail”.
Kraus talks about phenomenons like: Google, eBay, Amazon, Rhapsody, Netflix, and iTunes that really work the long tail
and recommends to all entrepreneurs that the tail is where it’s at! Serving the head ain’t bad but: ”...figure out how
to serve the tail of your market efficiently and you’ve got a blockbuster…”
[thanks to Tom Munnecke for this longtail tip]
[The Social Software Weblog]
7:57:57 PM 
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