<div class='hreview x-wpsb-review-book'>        <div>           <h3 class='item fn'><a class='url' href='http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html%3FASIN=1401302378%26tag=ws%26lcode=xm2%26cID=2025%26ccmID=165953%26location=/o/ASIN/1401302378%253FSubscriptionId=1GJZ3WSF1JX2981GW3R2'>The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More</a></h3>          <p><div><img src="http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/1401302378.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_V63383464_.jpg"/></div></p>           <div><b>Rating</b>: <span class="rating">5</span> out of 5<div class="sb-fullstar"> </div><div class="sb-fullstar"> </div><div class="sb-fullstar"> </div><div class="sb-fullstar"> </div><div class="sb-fullstar"> </div><div style="clear: left"></div></div>         <p><b>Author</b>: Chris Anderson</p>                        <p><b>Year</b>: 2006</p>                        <p><b>Publisher</b>: Hyperion</p>                       <p><b>ISBN</b>: <span class='Z3988' title='ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:book&rft.isbn=1401302378'>1401302378</span></p>     </div>      <div class='description'><p>Maybe the most fascinating read I had this year. Chris Anderson comes up with a very conclusive model how web commerce and communication differ from their "real-world" counterparts and what effects that has. Essentially, he shows that the common "80-20" rule (that most of the money/attention is spend on a few blockbusters) is not valid anymore in the web world. Rather, successful online shops make most of their money with niche products, each sold very seldomly. But there is literally millions of them — together with the cheapness of storage and distribution, outsiders are suddenly profitable. The same trend can be observed in the blogosphere, where individuals publish information independent of large media corporations.

This book had huge impact, in fact the long tail dia­gram has become an icon of the whole bottom-up, grass­roots, ama­teurs vs. pros, wis­dom of the crowds trend we expe­ri­enced over the last years. For my work, the whole devel­op­ment has high rel­e­vance: If every­body is hunt­ing the cool stuff besides the main­stream, puz­zling together his per­sonal taste mostly made up of widely unknown stuff, this requires dif­fer­ent par­a­digms for brows­ing, stor­ing and dis­cov­ery. I think it will take another cou­ple of years, until we under­stand, what the “social media” rev­o­lu­tion is about — besides big typo and beta badges.