Coefficient—range from among the best in Wikipedia (those written by passionate experts) to the worst (self-promotion, score-settling, and pranks). While many critics focus on the worst entries, the really important thing about Wikipedia’s Tail is thatthere is nothing else like it anywhere . From hard-core science to up-to-the-minute politics, Wikipedia goes where no other encyclopedia—whether constrained by paper or DVD limitations—can. Britannica doesn’t have an entry about the Long Tail phenomenon (yet), but Wikipedia’s entry is not only well written and thorough, it’s also 1,500 words long (and none of it was written by me!).
Wikipedia authors tend to be enthusiastically involved, liberated, and motivated by the opportunity to improve public understanding of some subject they know and love, a population that has, in five short years, grown a thousandfold with an invasion of empowered amateurs using the simple, newly democratized tools of encyclopedia production: a Web browser and an Internet connection.
This is the world of “peer production,” the extraordinary Internet-enabled phenomenon of mass volunteerism and amateurism. We are at the dawn of an age where most producers in any domain are unpaid, and the main difference between them and their professional counterparts is simply the (shrinking) gap in the resources available to them to extend the ambition of their work. When the tools of production are available to everyone, everyone becomes a producer.
THE REPUTATION ECONOMY
Why do they do it? Why does anyone create something of value (from an encyclopedia entry to an astronomical observation) without a business plan or even the prospect of a paycheck? The question is a key one to understanding the Long Tail, partly because so much of what populates the curve does not start with commercial aim. More important, this question matters because it represents yet another example of where our presumptions about markets must be rethought. The motives to create are not the same in the head as they are in the tail. One economic model doesn’t fit all. You can think of the Long Tail starting as a traditional monetary economy at the head and ending in a non-monetary economy in the tail. In between the two, it’s a mixture of both.
Up at the head, where products benefit from the powerful, but expensive, channels of mass-market distribution, business considerations rule. It’s the domain of professionals, and as much as they might love what they do, it’s a job, too. The costs of production and distribution are too high to let economics take a backseat to creativity. Money drives the process.
Down in the tail, where distribution and production costs are low (thanks to the democratizing power of digital technologies), business considerations are often secondary. Instead, people create for a variety of other reasons—expression, fun, experimentation, and so on. The reason one might call it an economy at all is that there is a coin of the realm that can be every bit as motivating as money: reputation . Measured by the amount of attention a product attracts, reputation can be converted into other things of value: jobs, tenure, audiences, and lucrative offers of all sorts.
Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor, calls this the “exposure culture.” Using blogs as an example, he writes,
The exposure culture reflects the philosophy of the Web, in which getting noticed is everything. Web authors link to each other, quote liberally, and sometimes annotate entire articles. E-mailing links to favorite articles and jokes has become as much a part of American work culture as the water cooler. The big sin in exposure culture is not copying, but instead, failure to properly attribute authorship. And at the center of this exposure culture is the almighty search engine. If your site is easy to find on Google, you don’t sue—you celebrate.
Once you think of the curve as being populated with creators who have
Wikipedia authors tend to be enthusiastically involved, liberated, and motivated by the opportunity to improve public understanding of some subject they know and love, a population that has, in five short years, grown a thousandfold with an invasion of empowered amateurs using the simple, newly democratized tools of encyclopedia production: a Web browser and an Internet connection.
This is the world of “peer production,” the extraordinary Internet-enabled phenomenon of mass volunteerism and amateurism. We are at the dawn of an age where most producers in any domain are unpaid, and the main difference between them and their professional counterparts is simply the (shrinking) gap in the resources available to them to extend the ambition of their work. When the tools of production are available to everyone, everyone becomes a producer.
THE REPUTATION ECONOMY
Why do they do it? Why does anyone create something of value (from an encyclopedia entry to an astronomical observation) without a business plan or even the prospect of a paycheck? The question is a key one to understanding the Long Tail, partly because so much of what populates the curve does not start with commercial aim. More important, this question matters because it represents yet another example of where our presumptions about markets must be rethought. The motives to create are not the same in the head as they are in the tail. One economic model doesn’t fit all. You can think of the Long Tail starting as a traditional monetary economy at the head and ending in a non-monetary economy in the tail. In between the two, it’s a mixture of both.
Up at the head, where products benefit from the powerful, but expensive, channels of mass-market distribution, business considerations rule. It’s the domain of professionals, and as much as they might love what they do, it’s a job, too. The costs of production and distribution are too high to let economics take a backseat to creativity. Money drives the process.
Down in the tail, where distribution and production costs are low (thanks to the democratizing power of digital technologies), business considerations are often secondary. Instead, people create for a variety of other reasons—expression, fun, experimentation, and so on. The reason one might call it an economy at all is that there is a coin of the realm that can be every bit as motivating as money: reputation . Measured by the amount of attention a product attracts, reputation can be converted into other things of value: jobs, tenure, audiences, and lucrative offers of all sorts.
Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor, calls this the “exposure culture.” Using blogs as an example, he writes,
The exposure culture reflects the philosophy of the Web, in which getting noticed is everything. Web authors link to each other, quote liberally, and sometimes annotate entire articles. E-mailing links to favorite articles and jokes has become as much a part of American work culture as the water cooler. The big sin in exposure culture is not copying, but instead, failure to properly attribute authorship. And at the center of this exposure culture is the almighty search engine. If your site is easy to find on Google, you don’t sue—you celebrate.
Once you think of the curve as being populated with creators who have
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