Two good posts today putting a damper on some of the Long Tail hype.
The first is from the CoFactors blog. John Franklin likens the Long Tail to the old 80/20 rule while managing to inject a little blue humor along the way. Best quote:
“The visualization of a long statistical tail makes it easy to think of each instance on the tail as a blog, or a website, or some other little business struggling to (if you’ll forgive me) get its piece of the tail.”
The second appears in the Long Tail Blog and is titled What the Long Tail Isn’t. Written by the man who coined the term itself, the article was prompted by the latest misuse of the buzzword darling of the geek set – as a metaphor for sandwich toppings. Usability guru Jakob Nielsen makes a cameo appearance in the comments section.
