Info/Law

Info Law Professor Tim Wu has written a witty and lucid review in Slate mostly panning the long-awaited Chris Anderson book on the Long Tail. As Wu notes, the original Wired article that hyper-popularized the phrase had valuable insights (I remember getting all excited when I read it!). And I would add that Anderson’s Long Tail blog has sometimes increased the value and context of those insights. But Wu says the book engages in meme bloat:

[L]ike many business books, The Long Tail commits the sin of overreaching. The tagline on the book’s cover reads, “Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More,” which is certainly wrong or at least exaggerated. Inside we learn about “the Long Tail of Everything.” Anderson’s book, unlike his original Wired article, threatens to turn a great theory of inventory economics into a bad theory of life and the universe.

One of the most exciting aspects of the Long Tail insight is its simplicity. I wonder if extending it to book length was ever a good idea. It sounds like a lot of those Saturday Night Live spinoff movies that try to stetch gags which might have been funny in three-minute increments into feature-length flops. I haven’t read the book myself — but I bet Wu is right.

And if you haven’t yet encountered the Long Tail, by all means read Anderson’s original article!

Filed under: Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Media