The Long Tail

I am now in the chapter of Long Tail where he talks about democratization of means of production. Chris Anderson points out that the pre-Long Tail economy was one based on scarcity. The means of production -- factories, printing presses, TV stations and editing facilities -- were too expensive for common people to possess. (Might I add that I hesitate to include the "masses" in this because again it's the middle class who have the income to buy these things. Yet this may change when the internet becomes more pervasive in mobile phones -- which makes technology more affordable, even to the masses. I need to write more on this later.).

The digital age turns consumers into producers too. The tools freely available when you buy a Mac or a PC make it easy for instance to create music and videos. Kids today use game engines to generate their own game levels and 3-D animation (aka "machinima"). Bloggers have created a revolution in publishing -- a second evolutionary step after Gutenberg made the Bible easily accessible.

There are lots more nuances that get factored into, and result from, Long Tail analysis. Right now, I am struck by the implications of the blurring of the line between Producers and Consumers. Anderson mentions the phenomenon of amateur astronomers who helped produce one of the greatest astronomical/physical discovery of the century, a feat that used the internet as its nerve center for communications. I've read The Wisdom of Crowds, Nexus, The Search and Tipping Point and have been thinking about the implications of all of these developments. Then I rushed to the bookstore to find a copy of The Long Tail (which, luckily, was available!),. It is pleasing and rewarding to find out that the Long Tail has integrated these into a practical economic model.

I woke up this morning realizing that this same model of pro-am (professional-amateur) collaboration can also work for weather narrowcasting. When people travel, they need a fairly accurate report on the state of the current weather in their destination. Here the question more relevant is "What is the weather like now in your place?" rather than "What will the weather be like in your place?"

It would be trivial to set up a web site that would allow travellers to enter a question and then volunteers answering back. Immediacy may be achieved by using RSS feeds. In YM and Google Desktop Service, bots and widgets could be created to interface directly with the web sites. In true Long Tail fashion, this web site will be more of a labor of love rather than created solely to earn (although some Adsense clicks and donations won't hurt, of course). I wonder what others think about this idea? Do you think it would work?