1. Go, make something happen.2. Do work you’re proud of.
3. Treat people with respect.
4. Make big promises and keep them.
5. Ship it out the door.
When in doubt, see #1.
Good and simple!!
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via blogs.hbr.org
Chris Anderson would be happy to hear that. It seems Kindle has provided an effective means to apply the Long Tail concept to books. More than half of Kindle bestsellers are free books. Here is an excerpt from an article NYT ran today.
And if a free e-book rises to the top of the Kindle best-seller list — or Barnes & Noble’s ranked list of free e-books — it automatically gives an author more visibility.
And in some cases, the free e-books work. Pamela Deron, a 29-year-old administrative assistant in Florida, said she downloaded a free edition of “Already Dead,” the first in the Joe Pitt series, onto her Kindle this month.
“There are so many authors out there that fall into obscurity,” Ms. Deron wrote in an e-mail message. “Simply no one knows of them, and some readers are hesitant buying an author they never heard of. Free books allow you to experience the writer as a whole, not just a small tidbit.”
She added: “Fifty dollars later, I have the entire Joe Pitt series.”
via ted.com
This is one of the most insightful and hilarious TED videos I’ve seen. So many problems in the world are problems of perception/paradigm/perspective. You change the perception and the problem may in fact disappear completely. But in our over-zealous focus on finding solutions, we fail to look at the problem itself.
So next time when you face a problem, double-check if it’s a perception issue or a genuine need.
I believe we are surrounded by too many opinions and just too many opinionators. Why? Because opinions are free!! And you can't be held accountable for your opinions. So we have bloggers who behave like proxy-journalists and dish out their opinions about everything. We have news channels who rather than reporting the facts and fact-based analysis, go into an expert-opinion mode every now and then. In fact, we have created special professions for the opinionators for e.g. TV Commentators, Forecasters etc.
Just listening to opinions never hurts. However the real problem begins when what you listen to contains more opinions than facts. And worst, when you are not able to distinguish between them. Then you either choose to listen to 'Yes-men' who have a positive opinion about everything you are doing or you listen to and get scared listening to the 'Glorifiers' who glorify everything someone else has done and tell you that you can't possible do something like that. Both of these are traps…BIG traps and how can one possibly avoid them? Do something on your own first. At least plunge into the pool. Don't start by asking for opinions about how cold the water can be and how deep the pool might be. Once you start, may be then you can ask for opinions, but ask them judiciously. And choose the opinionator carefully. This applies to individuals and organizations alike. Think about it. I know the irony that I am myself giving an opinion; but I hope that I come into your preferred list of opinionators…at least I am trying to.
Download now or preview on posterous
Manifesto The Long Tail Serving Niche Markets-Chris Anderson.pdf (645 KB)
For the uninitiated, this is the definition of Long Tail from Wikipedia:
The Long Tail or long tail is 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. The concept was popularised by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article, in which he mentioned Amazon.com and Netflix as examples of businesses applying this strategy.[1][2] Anderson elaborated the Long Tail concept in his book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (ISBN 1-4013-0237-8).
The distribution and inventory costs of businesses successfully applying this strategy allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The total sales of this large number of "non-hit items" is called the Long Tail.
In a nutshell, the concept stresses on making everything available to the customer- however hit or flop, good or bad, awesome or nuts you think it may be; because there is an audience for everything. And profit can be made by selling even the items in the 20 % lower tail.
And in India, the Short Film Industry is applying this concept successfully. They are uploading their content on various dedicated film video sites such as nautanki.tv, rajshri.com, filmaka.com etc. They get paid per view and good films, made on a shoestring budget of Rs 2000-3000, are getting up to a lakh online views. What's more: These sites put the short films in various film festivals across the world and if your film gets selected you get paid depending upon the level it reaches in the festival. It benefits the site in turn as viewers from across the world visit it to watch the film. Do check out the TOI article which describes this in detail. I believe that the long tail model can be applied even to the old Bollywood films. Of course, it would be another source of revenue for the filmmakers. But for us film-lovers, it would open the Pandora's Box of those good ol' classics. Also this is a manifesto which Chris Anderson had written about the Long Tail. Hope you enjoy reading it!I bet you would be as interested in the new Google phone “Nexus One” as I am. Until now, Google and Apple are the two companies which changed the entire landscape of any industry they’ve ventured into. And they changed it for better. So my excitement is justified!
Here are some pictures of Nexus One from Techcrunch:
And these are the specs from pcWorld:
The clever folks at These Are The Droids have analyzed the Android 2.1 ROM for the Nexus One and discovered specs for the Nexus One, including a proximity and ambient light sensor, an accelerometer, a magnetic compass, WiFi, a stereo FM speaker, a noise-cancellation chipset, OpenGL ES 2.0-capable graphics, and references to an auto-focus camera with LED flash. These are Droids also notes that the ROM 2.1 hints at a Snapdragon processor inside.
The Snapdragon is capable of clock speeds that top 1GHz–nearly double the processor speed of Motorola’s DROID. The OpenGL ES 2.0 support should also satisfy gamers, and put the Nexus One on par with the iPhone in terms of graphical power.
Another interesting feature is the purported FM tuner which was also to be included in the Motorola Sholes Tablet specs that leaked out earlier this month (here’s hoping we get some iPod Nano-style live radio control!). These Are Droids also reports that the Nexus One will have an 802.11n chipset (most smart phones currently support 802.11g); WiFi N may be overkill for this little machine, but at least it will be able to fit nicely into a dedicated Wireless-N environment.
Ultimately I think we truly are self-centered but also craft our self image by reflecting off others. Ideas seem to spread best when they allow each individual to become part of the story–by participating I simultaneously become more social and define my self more narrowly (this is who I am and this is not who I am, based on the information I consume and share). And none of us like to remain static–we are drawn to the new so that we feel new.