Idea 30 - The long tail The Internet changes everything, they used to say in the 1990s. That was just before they discovered that it didn't. But it changes quite a lot of things and one of them - according to the long tail theory - is the ability, over time, to make money out of very small niches. There was a time when the profitable niche was commonplace, but the age of mass production and mass marketing has crowded it out, most notably in consumer markets. Consolidation has produced powerful retailers. They choose to stock only those items that sell in large numbers, and have reduced the variety of their ranges accordingly. Many small producers have fallen by the wayside in the process. This phenomenon has been especially visible in the media and entertainment industries - in book and music publishing and in film production. We live in the world of the bestseller, the blockbuster, the hit. The argument of the long tail is that, in an Internet world, niche pr...