The Long Tail

I first heard of The Long Tail last night on Alan Yentob TV show about Social Networking.

The phrase The Long Tail (as a proper noun with capitalized letters) was first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article to describe certain business and economic models such as Amazon.com or Netflix. The term long tail is also generally used in statistics, often applied in relation to wealth distributions or vocabulary use.

The long tail is the colloquial name for a long-known feature of statistical distributions (Pareto distributions). The feature is also known as Pareto tails.

In these distributions a high-frequency or high-amplitude population is followed by a low-frequency or low-amplitude population which gradually "tails off." In many cases the infrequent or low-amplitude events—the long tail, represented here by the yellow portion of the graph—can cumulatively outnumber or outweigh the initial portion of the graph, such that in aggregate they comprise the majority.