The Long Tail, 1,000 True Fans and New New Media!

Levinson

New new media is a new new concept for me, considering that multiple forms of mass communication are evolving each day. Levinson’s book is interesting, although some key points strike me as odd. The first chapter is laced with so many references to new media then new new media that by middle of my reading I couldn’t distinguish which he was talking about. In other words, there’s an over use of the phrase in the first chapter. However, I did enjoy reading about how different media companie

s earn their revenue. He lists, for example, how Wikipedia has funding drives and Twitter does venture capital (Levinson, pg. 2). He does note that his sources are mainly internet because of the evolving change in how we use new media. I can honestly say that many of my sources for my social media marketing proposal paper will be internet-based as well. Even books written a year ago are out of date with today’s new concept of communication. The other piece I didn’t like about Levinson’s first chapter was the fact that he spent nearly a third of his time writing about the order of the chapters that were to follow. I haven’t read a book where the author explains his reasoning for putting Blogging before Myspace, and what we would normally think would come first actually comes last…it seems like a pointless use of words. However, I went ahead and began reading the next chapter and I have to say it gets much better. The information he gives about blogging will no doubt be much more useful than explaining why he chose to include that as part of the book.

Anderson

I enjoy Anderson’s book The Long Tail. It not only adds to my own research for my proposal, but it allows me to think about sales in a way that I hadn’t before. The concept of long tail merchandising is a good way to look at how sites like Amazon and Ebay are able to make such huge profits. Inevitably, creating an avenue where consumers can buy obscure items adds to the merchant’s profit, and having the items come from an online store with infinite space rather than limited shelf space really does add to the potential of becoming a major force I the producers’ arena. For those who are not familiar with the long tail, it is explained by the fact that the items which are not considered “hits” (such as beyonce items or blockbuster movies) still makes a company 20% profits. However, limited shelf space creates less availability for these “non hits”. Now, with Amazon, Ebay, and iTunes, people can get these items online with infinite space available to shelve these items. I’m delving more into the book, but I can already see how this will play a major role in my social media marketing plan that I am working on.

This picture comes from Kelly’s article on 1,000 true fans, mentioned in the next section. )

Kelly, Scalzi

Kelly’s perception of 1,000 true fans is something I haven’t heard before but I must say I like the concept! He notes that if you have 1,000 fans who are so dedicated to your work that they will travel anywhere, buy anything you are attached to and notified when you have new things coming up then you will be successful (Kelly). 1,000 true fans is feasible, and it is a much less difficult thing to achieve than 1 million fans. Conversely, if you have a group instead of being an individual artist, you need o increase our number of true fans as well. Also, if you are an artist like a blogger, you make profit by more clicks on your site, which means than you need quite a few true fans to make profit. I really loved the example shared of the writer who asked his true fans to pay $100 collectively to create the next chapter of a book he was writing. He was able to gain many true fans in this way, plus it rewarded them for their support with an exclusive look

at the book before it was published.

Scalzi’s article post that was written in reference to Kelly’s post, and there was some opposition to his claim of 1,000 true fans. Scalzi noted that it is difficult to create 1,000 “true” fans, as opposed to thousands of casual fans (Scalzi). Also, Scalzi said that having fans who would spend that much on a particular artist is also difficult to find. Also, artist compete with fans, fans find new artists and leave old ones, and the fact that they spend money on you doesn’t mean you get all of that money. I like this opposition; it makes me think of this concept in a different, more broken down way. Kelly replied back in another post a short time after Scalzi’s was posted. I always find it interesting when artists combat each other intellectually through their art.