The Long Tail & The Little Guy
Wired's article The Long Tail has attracted a lot of attention at Motricity. We're interested in its assertion that in digital content, the pareto principle goes out the window because shelf space is no longer scarce. That is, the bottom 80 percent of content titles by unit volume constitute more than half of overall revenues because there are just so many titles and so much specialization.
The article addresses PC music downloads. Does the long tail apply to mobile? Certainly not today: fragmentation, device usability, limited screen real estate network latency and other factors conspire to restrict mobile shelf space.
So, as one audience member texted to one panel today, what about small content providers? How do they get distribution? Operators can't deal with so many, so how do they get to market? If the little guy is important to either the long tail or discovering the next hit, how exactly does that come about given today's mobile distribution realities?
Tmobile described its approach, which is a content gateway program in which the small guy keeps majority of revenue. Distribution visibility (awareness) comes from marketing outside the storefront such as Jamster does via short code adverts on TV. In Europe,of course, this is the rule not the exception, but we're now seeing greater success with this distribution vector even in the us.
The way forward has both supply-side and demand/access necessities. In supply, we need technical and business approaches that make niche content profitable, ie. possible at lower fixed/upfront cost. For access, we need approaches that let marketers market and end users act on the calls to action that appeal to them. This means short codes in the short term, yes, but longer term it means increasing reliance upon analytics and facilitating commerce in physical and digital contexts beyond the wap storefront. The market should be driven by what users actually do, not what the industry thinks they will or are doing.
[Posted from my Treo 600 with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]
The article addresses PC music downloads. Does the long tail apply to mobile? Certainly not today: fragmentation, device usability, limited screen real estate network latency and other factors conspire to restrict mobile shelf space.
So, as one audience member texted to one panel today, what about small content providers? How do they get distribution? Operators can't deal with so many, so how do they get to market? If the little guy is important to either the long tail or discovering the next hit, how exactly does that come about given today's mobile distribution realities?
Tmobile described its approach, which is a content gateway program in which the small guy keeps majority of revenue. Distribution visibility (awareness) comes from marketing outside the storefront such as Jamster does via short code adverts on TV. In Europe,of course, this is the rule not the exception, but we're now seeing greater success with this distribution vector even in the us.
The way forward has both supply-side and demand/access necessities. In supply, we need technical and business approaches that make niche content profitable, ie. possible at lower fixed/upfront cost. For access, we need approaches that let marketers market and end users act on the calls to action that appeal to them. This means short codes in the short term, yes, but longer term it means increasing reliance upon analytics and facilitating commerce in physical and digital contexts beyond the wap storefront. The market should be driven by what users actually do, not what the industry thinks they will or are doing.
[Posted from my Treo 600 with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]
posted by Brian Dally at
3:25 PM
