The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
 |
|
|
Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine, published The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
The largest music retailer in America is Wal-Mart. The average Wal-Mart stocks 4,500 unique CD’s. The top 200 albums account for 90% of Wal-Mart’s CD sales. Rhapsody has approximately 2 million tracks available. The top 25,000 tracks on Rhapsody are the equivalent of Wal-Mart’s 4,500 CD’s. Sales of the next 75,000 tracks (from 25,001 to 100,000) are nearly 25% of Rhapsody’s downloads and there are sales beyond that. From 100,000 to 800,000, the downloads are about 15% of Rhapsody’s totals. According to Anderson, every time Rhapsody adds a track, there’s at least one download a month indicating that someone in the world is interested in purchasing even the most esoteric track. Rhapsody doesn’t have to give up shelf space to add these tracks. Once they’re digitized and added to the virtual inventory, they’re available to the consumer.
Anderson concludes by saying that successful internet companies will adhere to two rules: 1) make everything available and 2) help me find it. I keep his book on the shelf nearest my desk and I subscribed to his blog’s RSS feed.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Wally,
I suppose there are some similarities between e-tailers and online universities in this regard?
If a brick and mortar university decides to add 100 additional courses to their catalog, they have to overcome many more logistical hurdles than an online university.
I’ve actually noticed that many B&M schools are adding online courses to their catalogs. Is this because “shelf space” is limited and the universities have found that the online format is an overall better value?
June 18th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Ed:
I think there are some similarities between online e-tailers and online universities regarding the theory of the “Long Tail.” Because our reach is global and transcends geographical boundaries, we can find students with interests in topics like the Civil War when a traditional school might have difficulty filling the class. As far as the trend of brick and mortar universities adding more online classes, I believe that trend is more in response to student demand and, in the case of community colleges, employer demand. There are studies from respected organizations such as the Sloan Consortium (www.sloan-c.org) that demonstrate online students learn as well as or better than on ground students. I have read reports from brick and mortar schools that indicate online courses cost them more than on ground courses. I believe that is true until they reach a tipping point of scalability. There is, however, the recognition that online courses can reduce the need for physical classroom construction. I recall that the University of Georgia system proposed that all freshman English classes be held in an online format in order to save hundreds of millions in classroom construction costs. Seems to me that that proposal was a smart move. There are two schools, University of Massachusetts and University of Maryland, that have built a substantial number of online programs, more in line with the Long Tail.
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Hi Wally,
This is a typical participative style of leadership with an open-door policy. Please, I am Urging you to keep it up; we the future leaders in Nigeria are actually looking up to you. Aboout long Tail: It is an issue bordering around the business horizon. I think that the problem with most businessmen and women today is thier inability to differentiate between the traditional profit making and contemporary issues of corporate interest, such as social responsibilty; international management; and the importance of emotional intelligence as a success factor to business managers.