Editing Long tail (section)

==Chris Anderson and Clay Shirky==
Use of the phrase ''the long tail'' in business as "the notion of looking at the tail itself as a new market" of consumers was first coined by [[Chris Anderson (writer)|Chris Anderson]].<ref>See [http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2005/05/the_origins_of_.html The origins of "The Long Tail"]</ref> The concept drew in part from a February 2003 essay by [[Clay Shirky]], "Power Laws, Weblogs and Inequality",<ref name="shirky.com">[http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html "Power Laws, Weblogs and Inequality"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040707084914/http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html |date=2004-07-07 }}, by Clay Shirky. February 8, 2003.</ref> which noted that a relative handful of [[Blog|weblogs]] have many links going into them but "the long tail" of millions of weblogs may have only a handful of links going into them. Anderson described the effects of the long tail on current and future business models beginning with a series of speeches in early 2004 and with the publication of a ''Wired'' magazine article in October 2004. Anderson later extended it into the book ''[[The Long Tail (book)|The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More]]'' (2006).

Anderson argues that products in low demand or that have a low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. Anderson cites earlier research by [[Erik Brynjolfsson]], [[Yu (Jeffrey) Hu]], and [[Michael D. Smith (economist)|Michael D. Smith]], that showed that a significant portion of Amazon.com's sales come from obscure books that are not available in brick-and-mortar stores. The long tail is a potential market and, as the examples illustrate, the distribution and sales channel opportunities created by the Internet often enable businesses to tap that market successfully.

In his Wired article Anderson opens with an anecdote about creating a niche market for books on Amazon. He writes about a book titled [[Touching the Void (book)|Touching the Void]] about a near-death mountain climbing accident that took place in the Peruvian Andes. Anderson states the book got good reviews, but didn't have much commercial success. However, ten years later a book titled [[Into Thin Air]] by [[Jon Krakauer]] was published and Touching the Void began to sell again. Anderson realized that this was due to Amazon's recommendations. This created a niche market for those who enjoy books about mountain climbing even though it is not considered a popular genre supporting the long tail theory.

An Amazon employee described the long tail as follows: "We sold more books today that didn't sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday."<ref>[http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2005/01/definitions_fin.html#comment-3415583 The Long Tail: Definitions: Final Round!<!-- Bot generated title -->], comment #3 by Josh Petersen.</ref>

Anderson has explained the term as a reference to the tail of a [[demand curve]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4156078 |title=The Long Tail |publisher=NPR |date=5 November 2004 |access-date=25 December 2011}}</ref> The term has since been ''re''derived from an XY graph that is created when charting popularity to inventory. In the graph shown above, Amazon's book sales would be represented along the vertical axis, while the book or movie ranks are along the horizontal axis. The total volume of low popularity items exceeds the volume of high popularity items.