I was just reading an article<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail_pr.html> from 2004 in WIRED magazine about "the Long Tail" - the idea that most of a market is not the most popular items, but the mass of niche items that specific people will buy. In conventional brick-and-mortar stores, it is unlikely any of those niche persons to match a product you carry will find your store often enough to make it worth the effort of stocking that item, but online there is more exposure and less upfront cost. Anyway, the article referred to the pre-Long-Tail market as a "hit economy" - that is, that hits (as in "that song was a big hit") are what drive sales, not misses. However, in light of this thread which I had read just previously to the article, I interpreted it as a 'hit' of a drug, and wondered what the post-Long-Tail economy would be in this metaphor. A drip? -Arlo James Barnes
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
