Tales of Long Tails
Posted in: Blogs, Internet, Technology
Painting by Jonathan WeinerIn his latest post, My Tail Grows Longer, Tom Watson describes his mixed feelings about the exhausting effort of running a blog (”I love to write, I only like to blog,” he notes). Along the way, he skewers a few red herrings about the impact of blogs on the media marketplace:
[. . .]
Blogging isn’t about big stories or mainstream journalism. It’s about giving voices to thousands and thousands who didn’t have them before (beyond their dens and livingrooms and local barstools), providing real open distribution, and creating a vast patchwork quilt of conversation, thought, and passionate argument.
Which brings me to the latest hot theory of media monetization, the “long tail.” A book followed a fascinating Wired story by Chris Anderson, and both posited that in the digital age, the very vastness of content libraries - the ability to offer everything at any time - mitigated the need for mass marketing only the big hits, the juggernauts, the blockbusters. I think there’s some truth to it. Esoterica reigns in my media-buying universe. But it’s not just about the big media libraries and how to monetize them, and it’s not all about YouTube or MySpace or any of the other defenseless supersites out there.
Blogs have long tails too - this one certainly does. [. . .]
Tom goes on to describe a few posts of his that have continued to thrive years after being published. His post put me in mind of a few others that have similarly taken on lives of their own.
My favorite example is a post by Lance Mannion: The most unfortunate event in a series of unfortunate events. It’s a typically thoughtful Lance Mannion post, but what’s extraordinary about it is the way that a group of young Lemony Snickett fans converged upon it and, over the space of the year, formed a community around it. (They have since moved on to a second post that Lance set up for them — Finally, a very fortunate event in a Series of Unfortunate Events).
Two examples from my own blog are considerably more modest. The first is a Caption This Photo post about American Idol winner Carrie Underwood that continues to draw expressions of ire from her dedicated legion of fans. I’ve refrained from egging them on, principally because it seems that I’ve already done enough to provoke them.
The second example is a post I wrote for a friend, one that was actually intended to be a post with a long tail: An Open Thread on Getting Over Bad Relationships. Many respondents offered help and advice to the lovelorn, but recent contributions suggest that no amount of good advice is likely to ease the pain of a horrific break-up.
And that may be the longest tale of all.
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