The Long Tail*
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Caption: To gain attention, pull tail.
It?s been twenty years since the launch of the long tail concept as a Web marketing bonanza.
To paraphrase the theory, in the digital world, when large number of users are given access to large numbers of items (books, music, shoes, garden hoses, underwear, laundry detergent, etc) a wide variety of items will be chosen from an equally wide array of suppliers.
In other words, the user's choices will encompass the obscure and esoteric, like a merciful rain that falleth gently on all below.
Unfortunately for the long tail proponents that's not reality. Rather, the 80/20 Pareto principle prevails.
Want an example?
OK, here?s one with which I am familiar in large libraries:
Twenty percent of the literature on any topic satisfies 80% of the need.
So, four out of five library books ride the pine so to speak waiting to strut their stuff.
Alas, some bench-riders never get put into play.
Internecine strife (in libraries) may still erupt when advocates for Use come into conflict with advocates for Conservation; the just-in-time gang vs. the just-in-case mob.
Very likely, in our age of e-resources, the use of the legacy print collections (books) has slipped from 20% to possibly below 10%. One study suggested use of print collections at 6%.
Unintentionally, the long tail is an effective metaphor for blog rankings. Most of us bloggers are, far, far, removed from those blogs that get the majority of blog traffic.
If there are indeed 600 million blogs with 31 million active bloggers, how many hits do you think you will get if your readership ranking is 599,999,099?
Self-published books have a similar trajectory. While a very few will break out, most will never be read. That's right, never read.
And, the long tail notion fails to consider clutter and congestion on the Web. There are tons of abandoned blogs; one study suggests that 95% of blogs are inactive.
And thus, serendipity, that notion of finding what you did not know you were looking for, takes a beating on the Web!
There is so much out there, much of it of little or lapsed value, that unlike browsing vetted books on library shelves, browsing the Web is impossible, like sorting for treasure in a municipal land fill.
You say, let George (AI) be your personal browser.
If you do, you are relying on search engine procedures - how they go about their work - and I can tell you that search engines do not present unbiased results. They present skewed lists based on money and a wide variety of tricks/hacks used by software people to drive traffic to sites and away from others.
Yes, you can pay to have your blog move up in search rankings, and you can game the search with key words, etc. All true, but if there are others with more software tricks and cash, you won?t make the cut!
You will be just like those folks who use AI to produce resumes and letters each tailored to 1000 job ads. They get zero responses.
Why? Because the employer is using AI to swat out those AI produced applications! It?s two Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots knocking each other out.
What about the popularity of my blog, Leading from the Middle?
The blog launched in 2010 in concert with the publication of my book, Leading from the Middle. It was to augment the book's democratic workplace concepts.
Under the log tail theory, where niche publishers gain equal exposure and relevance, LfM should have gained considerably more hits than the half million it has received over 14 years.
Not quite, the long tail turns into a stub.
How can that be? Surely, Google or DuckDuck will only list out the most primary links thereby growing the hits number.
Let's try that out.
I was one of the first to theorize in print about the unboss.
If I ask Google to search for unboss, the first 50 search results (links) fail to include my (prescient, of course) blog, The Unboss Leader .
If I add my last name the results should improve, right?
Nope.
The search trick that puts my blog at the top is to enclose the words in quotes.
While we are on the un theme, what do you think happens when I ask Google to find my highly popular essay, the Un-DMV.
What comes up? Mounds of links to the DMV, and not a single mention of the Un-DMV.
When I use the quotes remedy, "The Un-DMV" is the second link.
As Pareto implies, unless you are in the top 20% of the blog universe, your message is one of millions in millions of corked bottles, bobbing in a boundless sea.
Never have so many written so much (for free) to be read by so few.
Why, then, blog?
I do so for two reasons: gaining pleasure from creative writing and for crystalizing topics I intend to teach.
Blogging - putting stuff out there for even a few to see - is a way of distilling my thoughts about the underlying concepts of this blog: freedom at work, the democratic workplace, teamwork, collaboration and cooperation, and, the unboss, among a few others.
Even without a wide readership, I gain a sense of accomplishment with each new essay. I imagine this is a similar feeling for an amateur composer of music or for an amateur watercolorist. Just as those musical notes and those dabs of color take shape, my expanding on an idea brings personal satisfaction.
When I ran races, I always had butterflies ahead of the starter?s gun. But after a race run well, came that sense of individual achievement, that something to be a little proud of.
*Under the Long Tail: A Reflection on E-writing appeared in this blog in December of 2014. Today?s blog, like many others is an update. If AI is to be believed, 74% of blogs in 2023, were updated. What does that suggest? Lately I have been updating some of my favorite blogs.
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Copyright all text John Lubans 2014 and 2024
John Lubans - portrait by WSJ