Features

... Since appearing two years ago, the [Long Tail] book has been something of a sacred text in Silicon Valley. Business plans that foresaw only modest commercial prospects for their products cited the Long Tail to justify themselves, as it had apparently proved that the Web allows a market for items besides super-hits. If you demurred, you were met with a look of pity and contempt, as though you had just admitted to still using a Kaypro.

That might now start to change, thanks to the article (online at tinyurl.com/3rg5gp), by Anita Elberse, a marketing professor at Harvard's business school who takes the same statistically rigorous approach to entertainment and cultural industries that sabermetricians do to baseball.

Prof. Elberse looked at data for online video rentals and song purchases, and discovered that the patterns by which people shop online are essentially the same as the ones from offline. Not only do hits and blockbusters remain every bit as important online, but the evidence suggests that the Web is actually causing their role to grow, not shrink.

Please comment on KDnuggets Forums: Is Long Tail Assumption Valid?

Read more in WSJ review of the work, and here is the original study

Should You Invest in the Long Tail?, by by Anita Elberse

It was a compelling idea: In the digitized world, there�s more money to be made in niche offerings than in blockbusters. The data tell a different story.

Also see response from Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail

and

The Long Tail Debate: A Response to Chris Anderson, by Anita Elberse.