The Long Tail

The long tail is an interesting concept and one that many might stray from without the proper knowledge. The long tail refers to everything that is not a top seller, which is a lot of stuff. When looking at amazon.com we immediately see all the top selling books but there are thousands more that aren’t top sellers that people do actually buy and that is how this business makes its money. The way I see it is there are so many other stores selling those same best selling books that it makes them easily obtainable and creates more competition whereas the other ones that may not be as popular are forgotten about, not by Amazon.

Once again Danielle makes a valid point by discussing wal-mart and how they sell every product from perfume to tobacco and that’s how they stay alive. Not only stay alive but rake in millions I might add. The long tail is especially beneficial to those companies that are based on the internet because it gives them the ability to see the demand and then meet it without having to kind of predict what will be ordered. So companies like Netflix and even Fresh Direct have an advantage over Curly’s Video in St. Johnsville and The Food Emporium in Manhattan. They service everyone not just those in the area and they give them whatever they want. Another well written article about the long tail can be found on Meghan’s blog.

We put the folks in folksonomy

First off I would like to break apart this intricate word, folksonomy, so that it is in laymen’s terms for those of my readers who may not be able to understand it. So here goes we have folks and onomy and according to wikipedia’s academic studies it means “how average people (non-experts) classify the world around them.” Huh I’m kind of offended by that. Nevertheless moving right along.

Folksonomy needs a little more explaining than just that. It is actually a newly created term that refers to categorization based on key words. Such as, on the internet, using the site del.icio.us we can “tag” a picture with a keyword dog and then when somebody types that word in to look for pictures they will find all the picture that people have tagged dog. It’s a rather simple way of getting the information one needs, however, it’s not perfect. One problem with a folksonomy is that at the moment it is only used for pictures and blogs as Danielle says and it becomes difficult when only one word tags are used. If we are only using one word tags we are likely to get all kinds of responses that don’t necessarily apply to what we were looking for. As Joy says it’s not that big yet but it will soon be and we are the generation that will grow with it which yes it is pretty cool.

As for corporations I think it’s defiantly something that can benefit them. Going back to my original explanation of the word it seems that since corporations need to gain the support of us the “average” people folksonomies are the way to go. It gives us the information we need and thus benefits them because of what we have learned.

Chapter 3

Chapter three of the Cluetrain Manifesto once again talks about having a voice. This time it goes a little more in depth and discusses the various ways we can have a voice through the internet which are through wired conversations, e-mail, mailing lists, newsgroups, chat, and webpages. All of this seemed pretty redundant to me. I know the internet and all of its facets and how they work, but I hadn’t had any real productive encounter with anything other than e-mail and a few webpages that help me to get information. I had really only thought of corporations having websites which to some extent is beneficial but it wasn’t until reading Jean’s experience with a companies chatroom that I realized just how valuable these tools are. He says “I was surprised to find a very useful human being on the other side of the conversation helping me efficiently. There are many companies offering online help today and many interesting read that people can view and learn from.” Jon D also brought up a good point sayng that “People don’t want cold formalities.” We need to feel that there is a person on the other end and that they aren’t feeding us lines. Finally I’d like to comment on the last section of this chapter which is Silence is fatal. It is so true. If companies allow people to say things negative about them with giving a rebutle then what’s been said stands and is deemed true. And this is in fact fatal because the internet rechease so many that in no time tons of people will be turned away from the company because of what someone has said on the internet.

Final Post

For the art mobs prject I worked on the PR. I sent press releases to bloggers, some of which were:
http://outward-inwarduniverse.blogspot.com/
http://sourmonkey.blogspot.com/
http://vanessa-raney.blogspot.com
http://simshalom.blogspot.com
http://aztglory.blogspot.com
http://thedeathofcinema.blogspot.com
http://msdaisy.blogspot.com
http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com

Quintin Himself

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Originally uploaded by Jessip0014.

This is my pook in his Bills jersey! I just felt like the blog needed this. Isn't he the cutest little hot dog!!