The Long Tail/Anderson 123-126

124 Blogging…what they may lack in polish and scope, they more than make up in credibility: Their readers know that there is a real person there that they can trust.

126 Powerlaws are a family of curves that you can practically anywhere you look, from biology to book sales. The Long Tail is a powerlaw that isn’t cruelly cut off by bottlenecks in distribution such as limited shelf space and available channels. Because the amplitude of a powerlaw approaches but never reaches zero as the curve stretches out to infinity, it’s known as a “long-tailed” curve, which is where I derived the name of this book.

As far as consumer markets go, powerlaws come about when you have three conditions:
Variety (there are many different sorts of things)
Inequality (some have more of some quality than others)
Network effects such as word of mouth and reputation, which tend to amplify differences in quality.