The Economist does the Long Tail

Tom Standage writes a great piece in The Economist this week on the Long Tail.  If you don't know Tom's work, check out his books, including the classic The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers and brand new A History Of The World In Six Glasses. Here's an excerpt from his one-page Economics Focus column in the current issue:

Perhaps the most profound implication of the long tail, however, is its impact on popular culture. As choice expands and people can more easily find niche content that particularly interests them, hits will be less important: so what will people talk about when gathered around the water cooler? In fact, says Mr Anderson, the idea of a shared popular culture is a relatively recent phenomenon: before radio and television, he notes, countries did not operate in "cultural lockstep". And the notion of shared culture is already in decline, thanks to the rise of cable television and other forms of market fragmentation. The long tail will merely accelerate the effect. There will still be blockbuster movies, albums and books, but there will be fewer of them. The companies that will prosper, says Mr Anderson, will be "those that switch out of lowest-common-denominator mode and figure out how to address niches."