What are the Long Tail Effect and Streisand Effect? How are they related to Web 2.0? Give real-life examples how they take place in Web 2.0 age.
What is Long Tail, according to the Wikipedia, long tail refers to the statistical property that a larger share of population rests within the tail of a probability distribution than observed under a 'normal' or Gaussian distribution. The term has gained popularity in recent times as a retailing concept describing the niche strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities – usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities. [1]
Maybe the concept of the Long Tail is a little bit complicated to you, I will show you a real wold Long tail example. First of all, we should understand 20%-80% rule, that is to say 20% of retailer’s products will account for 80% of their sales. How could it be happened? Most of time, people will buy just about anything you offer them.However, if people are given large-scale choice then the situition will be changed, the left 80% of retailer’s products will also being successful. Such as some online stores(Amaszon), which give sufficient people coming to it then people are diverse enough for their interests to diverge significantly. That is to say, if you provide a broad range of products to costumer, you will find that the most unpopular product will still have chance to outweigh the total sales of the top 80%. For any retailer who can aware of this point then they can make a great profits on their busniess.
With the advant of the Web 2.0, more and more people accept the online shopping gradually. The online shopping provide broad range of choices to the customer, some unpopular products may be very popular in the online shopping, it is highly subversive to the 80-20 rule in the real life. It can be changed to 50-50 in the Web 2.0 system. For example, Amazon.com make it changes happened. I found that there is a phenomenon that's being called Web 2.0 that effectively uses human interactions to create associations on the net. Amazon are already doing this with their recommendations which uses a customer's previous purchases to inform them of things that they might like. The way that people buy things are also used by Amazon to group similar items together. This can actually link a book that's not selling well with a bestseller and sometimes the poorer-selling item, due to reccomedations and reviews can out-sell the bestseller. Without this kind of association many kinds of items would not be sold on Amazon. [3]
After introducing the Long tail effect, let's focus on the other import concept which is Streisand effect. According to the Wikipedia, The Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of causing the information to be publicized widely and to a greater extent than would have occurred if no censorship had been attempted. It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, following a 2003 incident in which her attempts to suppress photographs of her residence inadvertently generated further publicity. [2]
In our real life, curiosity is a natural instinct of the human mind. People always want to find out the reality that be blocked information by somebody. The curiosity is the main reason that causes the streisand effect. Showing you a simple example to explain streisand effect. If you want to let somebody knows something, you just tell him do not figure out this thing, then he will try everyway to find the reality. It is the same principle apply to Web 2.0 era, if you want everyone knows your information on the web, just block it. I just list a real life example to illustrate what is the Streisand effect.
The Streisand effect is very common online phenomenon. It also happened during the Web 2.0 era. In the Web 2.0 era, people can express their own opinion, post their pictures, articles and anything they like. Every one wants to be the host of the Web 2.0 and actually they make it by nowadays. Every one has the right to express their views unreservedly. When some articles and information be blocked in the internet, this will rouse people’s curiosity. The article will quickly became one of the most popular pages on the site. For example, In January 2008, The Church of Scientology's unsuccessful attempts to get Internet websites to delete a video of Tom Cruise speaking about Scientology resulted in the creation of Project Chanology. Similarly, the church attempted to remove a series of Operating Thetan document leaks from Wikileaks. Wikileaks responded by vowing to "release several thousand additional pages of Scientology material next week", a threat which was followed through.[2] The Streisand effect was able to make it because the feature of the Web 2.0.
References:
[1] Long Tail, [online], last accessed on 18 November, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail
[2] Streisand effect, [online], last accessed on 18 November, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
[3] Understanding the 'Long Tail' Effect, [online], last accessed on 18 November, 2010 http://www.celtnet.org.uk/info/long_tail.php
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