The Long Tail: Chris Anderson's talk on MS campus

I am taking a break from LINQ/C#-related posts for a littler detour. Today I attended Chris Anderson's talk about "The Long Tail". We often have authors of interesting technical/business/organizational books visit the campus as a part of their book promotion tours.

In a nutshell, the author generalizes the Amazon/Netflix phenomenon to hypothesize that the future of commerce and culture is not in the mass market hits but in the long tail of the distribution - the ability to sell and buy the large number of niche products and services that are possible due to internet, search technology, efficient supply chain etc. I will let you read/ hear the details for yourself - from other sources of course.

The talk itself was very interesting. The author fielded a very diverse set of questions with aplomb. It is also relevant to what we do - because developer division is all about enabling developers to build applications that we won't have the bandwidth or interest or knowledge to build. There are many in the division who spend a lot of time thinking about enabling the ecosystem but now I will be even more conscious about not just the common developer (the "mainstream") but the many ISVs who serve the niches.

Enough said. Back to LINQ next time though I may do more such detours in future.