So, I guess this blog is about the Internet?

So, I guess this blog is about the Internet? That really wasn't my intention yesterday. I hereby promise to write more entries on sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. That's what sells, right?

I Think I Broke the Internet

6/8/06- 2:47pm
I broke the Internet today.

First, I decide to start a blog and immediately take down all of blogger/blogspot. Seriously, I have written three posts waiting for this damn site to come back online.

Then, I took down Epsilon/Dream. Any web-geeks out there? Epsilon is one of the biggest email vendors in the world. I don't know if we were the only ones having problems, but DREAM has been down all day. The company I work for is a major news source and today is one of the biggest news days all year. (Al-Zarqawi killed) All the print editions missed the story. It was a shining moment for the Internet as a source of real-time information. Too bad we couldn't send out today's headlines...

OK, I've already realized that it will be impossible not to talk about my friends or my job. I told you that I would contradict myself. This is all part of the experiment, though. I still think I can remain fairly anonymous. We'll see.

Long Tail

I read in the New York Times today that of the 60,000 titles that Netflix stocks, 35,000-40,000 of them are rented on a daily basis. Now that is not DVDs, but TITLES. So, it turns out that people are not sheep after all. They are actually consuming all sorts of different content, not just what is hot that weekend.

There is hope after all.

This brings me to the idea of the "long tail." The basic idea is that small amounts of (in this case) content taken together form a major segment of the marketplace. Like grains of sand forming a beach. Each individual movie/ website/ blog/ article/ song/ book/ whatever is not significant, but the fact is that we are moving away from the model of major media players. User generated content is king. (Which brings us back to why I am blogging.) Individual websites are more powerful than the major portals. So, how does a website stand out? Or can it? Is the Pareto Principle dead? Or does that work with the long tail? I'm honestly not sure. Comment if you have thoughts on that please.