I finished The Long Tail  by Chris Anderson a couple of weeks ago but have been procrastinating writing a post about it. Maybe it’s because there’s so much that resonates with me that it’s hard to pick one or two things to talk about. It was the same when I read Clay Shirkey’s Here Comes Everybody.

So a few points:

• The book was published in 2006 and there’s not one mention of YouTube, even though the author discusses online video and viral videos (as an emerging medium in 2006.) YouTube was created in early 2005 but didn’t really get on the radar screen until later that year. All this is to say that what we take for granted today barely existed a few years ago, even to afficionados like Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine. What will be the YouTube of 2010, the technology tool that’s taken for granted but virtually unknown today?

• This quote from the book caught my eye:

  • "People are re-forming into thousands of cultural tribes of interest, connected less by geographic proximity and workplace chatter than by shared interests. In other words, we’re leaving the watercooler era, when most of us listened, watched, and read from the same, relatively small pool of mostly hit content. And we’re entering the micro-culture era, when we’re all into different things."

• Anderson points to three forces leading up to the Long Tail:
  • Democratize the tools of production. With a PC, you can be your own sound studio, radio station, and author. The result is more stuff, which lengthens the tail.
  • Democratize the tools of distribution. Anyone can submit a podcast to iTunes or sell their book on Amazon. The result is more access to niches, which fattens the tail.
  • Connect supply and demand. Tools like Google help me find that needle in the haystack. The results is that business moves from hits to niches.

All of these points gets me excited about A Bigger Voice, because it speaks to how the time is right for the innovative solopreneur, the quirky artist, the social activist, and the wise author to make use of the landscape to be seen and heard and attract a community of kindred spirits. And even monetize.

My brother pointed me to a Harvard Business Review article, "Should You Invest in the Long Tail?" that seemed to refute a passionate discussion we had at a family dim sum outing over the summer, on just this topic about monetizing a niche.  I argued that with the same forces that give rise to the Long Tail and niches, even long-struggling artists have a chance at making a living (ala Kevin Kelly’s concept of 1,000 True Fans.) My brother argued that "the long tail per se is not a commercial space for creators, only for aggregators. It is instead a place for passionate people to find expression and community. If you are talented and lucky, you get to the second level of sustainable niche, and a very few superstars make intense amounts of money. Very much like being an actor, I think." His original point at dim sum was that the Internet only served to make the superstars (the head of the tail) even bigger but did nothing for the guy at the end of the tail, the quirky artist.

The HBR article and an opportune posting on Anderson’s blog by none other than Kevin Kelly helped me to put the missing pieces in place. The impact of focusing on community-building is not reflected in the Long Tail. It only shows what happens when lots of people can create, distribute their stuff, and be found. That is the "place for passionate people to find expression and community" that my brother talked about. And when we focus on building a community, instead of regarding community as happenstance, it suddenly becomes possible to move up the tail, towards the head, where commercialization is viable with a big enough market.

Now at this point, I can hear Beth, my colleague who lives and breathes community-building, protest loudly, that I’ve corrupted the intention of community with monetization.  I don’t think we have to throw the baby out with the bath water.  A community worthy of notice must mean something in terms of monetization, without poisoning the purpose of community. It’s not clear in my head how all this works out. And it’s what keeps me coming back to the concepts of ABV. Focus on community-building, then add in monetization. Both are needed for sustainability. The seeds for both are planted at the same time.

Stay tuned. More fun to follow…..