In case you missed its mention on Slashdot, the Financial
Times has a funny (and telling) column today by James Boyle
(Professor, Duke Law School) on the dark underbelly of the "long
tail. You remember the long tail, right? It's manna from heaven -
a chance for the Internet to enable a wider variety of sellers to
find the wider variety of buyers than our previous markets have
allowed.
Well, maybe life under the long tail isn't as rosy as life
pontificating about the long tail, as Boyle discovers:
The academic in me has been very interested by the much hyped
arrival of the “long tail” economy – the idea that the future
lies in using the efficiency of the internet to sell smaller
quantities of more goods (think of the astounding …
[Read more]