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The Long Tail in Digital economics

Ids — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:01:27 +0000

In the digital age with dropping costs for inventory storage and distribution, the traditional economy is (partially) transformed to a new economy where products which are part of the Long Tail suddenly become available almost for free. The articles linked to (from Wired magazine) for the most part refer to entertainment industry products like music, video, books etc.

Fig. 1 The Long tail “Power Law like” graph from Wikipedia

What’s interesting is that because of scarce (physical) resources in the traditional economy , only about 20% of the products, – the most popular ones -, are available to consumers. But with the digital economy it is feasable to deliver the other 80% of the products (like Amazon is doing). Even more remarkable, this 80% share amounts to a larger profit than the small 20% population because the costs of storage and distribution are almost the same for all digital products. Apparently Amazon makes most of its profit from the niche products.

I suppose the Long Tail could also apply to any other product or service which can be delivered through the Internet. Software and software development seem to follow these same rules (with the open source software movement). You could probably find the right software for any niche, with varying levels of quality. But isn’t that similar to finding niche music, where you’d find different levels of quality as well?

So maybe every product or service that can be transformed from physical to digital form can be delivered (almost) for free and still give consumers an almost unlimited choice.

The age of the universe reveiled

Ids — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:50:22 +0000

Finally! “She” has tried to conceal it for a long time, but now we know the universe is about 13.73 billion (+/- 120 milion) years old. Although Christopher Columbus might not agree, the universe also appears to be flat. Also the stuff we are made of (called “matter”) apparently is less than 5% of the whole universe. The other stuff in the universe is 72.1% dark energy and 23.3% dark matter, which we can’t even see or sense in any way…

I’m glad I know these details now thanks to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe

New wordpress + theme

Ids — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:09:09 +0000

So, I finally got rid of that Misty theme, and replaced it with the GlossyBlue theme. Had to do some hacking and tweaking to loose the sponsoring part, because I do not want someone else to earn money from this blog Also upgraded the wordpress software to a newer version which supports tagging. So if you notice anything weird, let me know.

Accomplishing More By Doing Less

Ids — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:10:17 +0000

Google coach Marc Lesser talks about accomplishing more by doing less. Seems to be a good motto Some Zen-like stuff, which may help you getting more ideas and support innovation.

New: books page

Ids — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:03:32 +0000

Created a page with an overview of books (novels) I am collecting. That makes it easier to remember which books already have and which I can buy.

Hello world!

Ids — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 14:02:04 +0000

Ah, finally! Got my own place on the web.

So what’s going on over here? Well, not much yet, since I have to setup most of the stuff first. But at least I can write something down for others to see. Want something useful to read? You might want to take a look at Creating Passionate Users blog.

Need some info on web design? Take a look at 24 Ways or A List Apart.