Oct 06 2010
Week 6 Response
- Based on further reading and the development of some ideas internally, I can say that I have more faith in Wikis becoming a major force in the RW revolution. I previously wondered if they would bring RW culture to the same level of respect as traditional media and some of the info I acquired elaborates. When thinking previously, I only considered the informational aspect of wikis — the idea that multiple people could provide the knowledge that they had to make up an article that meets a certain standard. What I didn’t know was how much traffic on Wikipedia is used just for editing. In Remix, it was reported that only 10 percent of the edits done on Wikipedia resulted in a substantive addition of information. It is no wonder that most of the articles have a standard of writing and non-bias that is better than my local newspaper. They also provided some examples of how successful Wikipedia had been as a news source. The case they used was the VT shootings a few years ago — 2,074 people helped to make the article and it received 750,000 views within the first two days. I doubt there are many newspapers that received that kind of readership on this incident within two days.
- The Long Tail principle states “that as the cost of inventory falls, the efficient range of inventory rises,” and that “as transaction costs generally fall to zero, the efficient inventory rises to infinity.” On first reading, I didn’t quite understand this concept. All I could think about was inventory that wouldn’t spin. We’ve all been in a store and accidentally found that one item that has sat there for years and has a thick layer of dust. I used to work at a plumbing and HVAC wholesaler and we had a lot of product like that — stuff that someone might look for once every five years and when they are looking for it, it’s impossible to find. I just couldn’t wrap my head around getting over the money that is lost by something sitting on the shelf. The LTP really isn’t about that. Although inventory that won’t spin will drive up the cost of the inventory, keeping costs down elsewhere will allow those rarely bought items to be held. Other stuff will pick up the slack. It makes a lot more sense to me now. I do still wonder if its worth it to try and keep all those strange items that someone like Amazon keeps. Surely, it would be tough for an upstart to have money to waste on items it won’t sell by the time they go bankrupt. And how much more money would Amazon make if they didn’t have all that stuff? Is it really the Long Tail products that keep us coming back or is it the low (and sometimes tax free) prices, fast shipping, and great customer service?