By: Ross Dawson

Ross Dawson — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:40:20 +0000

Yes Ian, guilty as charged! It is definitely a useful concept beyond its strict definition. However I do think that many of the people who bandy the term about would find it useful to understand it a little better…

By: Ian Thomas

Ian Thomas — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 11:57:29 +0000

Are you not being a little pedantic/didactic with your definition of the application of the “long tail”? I agree with you that the term is horribly over-used and extended into areas where it really shouldn’t, but I’ve always thought of the head/tail curve as a plot of the frequency distribution of a collection of items (for example, music tracks, sites, or search terms). With this definition there’s no need for the items to be connected – the head/tail curve simply reflects that a small number of items will be very popular, whilst there will be a “tail” of many items which occur infrequently.
Using this definition, you can “grow the head” if the most popular items become (proportionally) more popular, and you can “grow the tail” if you add more items in total (for example, more unique search terms, or more music tracks). So the overall shape of the curve doesn’t (necessarily) change, but the cut-off points at the head and tail do.

Comments on: What most people don’t understand about the long tail

By: Ross Dawson

By: Ian Thomas