The Long Tail

The Long Tail is a term used in a statistical sense to explain the distribution of a companies profit income. The long tail can be described in a graph (here is some information in better detail on Long Tail on Wikipedia.org), however, I will try to my best to explain. In a graph the long tail starts as a great peak and then dramatically slopes down into a constant tail. This tail if taken piece by piece is only worth little in value, however, if added up as one whole the tail end can have a greater value than the peak end of the graph.

There are large businesses who profit only from the peak profits, thus they must be careful to only produce the highest selling products. On the other hand there are some companies such as Amazon.com who make the bulk of their profits from the tail end of the graph, though they do gain substantial profit from high selling items as well. It is obvious that a company that can make profit off of both the high selling products and tail end products will be very successful. The problem is it takes money to produce and stock any product and it is hard to know at what time a certain low selling product will be in demand. This is why most companies only produce items that are in high demand.

Everyone in the class had very good insights on this subject. Some blogs that I thought were good were Joy's page and Danielle's blogs both offer great ideas on the subject of the long tail.

Happy Days are Here Again!!!!

Chapter two of The Cluetrain Manifesto, sums up a very good idea that we lose ourselves in trying to make everything right. By being the best employee, or managing the best company. Every thing is a role that we play inorder to make it to the top. For instance in his book Locke notes that, "Just about all the concessions we make to work in a well-run, non- disturbing, secure, predictably successful, managed environment have to do with giving up our voice." (Locke; The Cluetrain Manifesto)

I feel that Locke is saying that our lives are built around making ourselves appear as if our lives are under control and that we are the best. But as we live our lives performing in front of our co-workers and our bosses, we lose what really makes us...well us. We aren't able to lose control one in a while or have a bad hair day. Our personal feelings about a subject must not interupt out professional lives. However, Locke believes that with the evolution of the internet, and with the ability to create a home webpage, people are given a place to offer up their voices with out a care of who is listening. " Because a home page is a place in which we can express who we are and let the world in. Meager though it may be, a home page is a way of having a voice." (Locke; The Cluetrain Manifesto)

I feel that this chapter offers hope to us. It looks at the internet as a safe haven for our minds. A great example of this can be found in Miss M's page. She has written some pretty good blogs on the Manifesto, but this one shows how the worker can express his or her true voice after playing pretend at work. Chris also feels as though this chapter has a more positive out look.

The Cluetrain Manifesto Chapter I

The Cluetrain Manifesto is an intresting piece of work as I have read so far. In chapter one, author Christopher Locke introduces his readers to the idea that we all are going to die, and that the media has created a homoginized society of materialistic and superficial people. In the first chapter Locke goes on to explain how these ideas correalate with the internet. He feels as though the Internet is an untouched world that my cunsmers have entered inorder to interact with one another. And now that more people than ever are connected to one another through out the world, a global world has now come into play. Ideas and information are now able to be passed around more freely and easily, thus posing a problem for big businesses.

"So here's a little story problem for ya, class. If the Internet has 50 million people on it, and they're not all as dumb as they look, but the corporations trying to make a fast buck off their asses are as dumb as they look, how long before Joe is laughing as hard as everyone else?"

What Locke is trying to say is that with the growing popularity of the internet, and with people becoming more interconnected with one another, information about businesses and their products are passed around. Therefore peole will not fall for the old selling tactis that big businesses used to get away with. They have to work harder for the trust of the consumer.

Alexis' blog on this chapter I found very interesting. Also I liked the fact that Joy completely disagreed with Locke's argument, and had several valid points to back up her opinion.

Folksonomy

Metadata is the term used for data about data. This type of data has been created and defined by those who are highly knowledgable in an area of expertise. Folkonomy is a type of metadata. However, unlike metadata, which is created by experts, folksonomy is created by regular people. Sites like Wikipedia and Flickr, that are maintained by everyday users, are infact a type of folkonomy. Users are giving their take on the definition of something so that others may come and use that definition along with the definition left by others to come to their own conclution about a topic.

This type of data is useful to organizations and to the world because the definitions given by nonprofessionals seems to be more easy to understand. This makes that defintion more desirable to consumers when they go to an orginizations website to do research on a product. Also a consumer might feel more comfortable with a definition of a product that has been made by another consumer rather than by the company, because companies seem to juice up their defintions of a product in order to get more sales. A definition created by another consumer would be more honest.

Chris gives the best and most clearly defined definitions for Metadata and Folkonomy. Meghan makes a good case about William Gibson's opinion about the internet, and his contribution to folkonomy. Alexis also has some goo insight on the topic of Folksonomy.

Holla at an Art Mob

“Art Mobs” is a project designed by students in Dr. David Gilbert’s Organizational Communication course at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City. For Spring Semester, Gilbert’s students have produced unofficial audio guides for the Museum of Modern Art and made them available on the Web as podcasts. They are inviting the public to submit homemade audio guides to their podcast feed, which the students hope to make a permanent distribution system for audio guides that anyone can produce, share, transfer to an iPod or other MP3 player and take into MoMA. (From the "Art Mobs" Press Release)

I had a fun time while being involved in the "Art Mobs" assignment. Though the work was spead out between the whole class, I managed to put a finger on a part of the project even if it wasn't much. I helped in the brainstorming of ideas. We came up with so many different ideas for the podcasts. One was to have the posdcast in the form of a radio talk show complete with "on air" interviews with the "artists" and with certain celebrities like Paris Hilton and Star Jones. We also thought of the idea of having the podcast in the form of a "family fued" type game show. These were fun ideas, however the best idea triumphed over all and now you may experience the "Art Mobs" at my class' Org Comm Website. I also helped in the publicizing the "Art Mobs" opening event by handing out flyers at school and at my job. Yay!

Super!!!

Hey hey hey...

Man this blogging stuff is super! I just changed my page up...how cool is that? Instead of one long box...I made four short boxes. I know that I may sound a little corny but I'm really having a good time playing around with this blog. Until next time.

Dawn

I Like Your Blog :o)

Hey classmates! Everyone's blogs look so good and are very interesting. For instance Chris' page has a lot about movies and sports. Lania's page has some very necessary links to AccuWeather and MSN. And because I just LOVE to party Jennifer's site has some great links if you want to hit the New York party scene. Thanks all of you for blogging these great links!!!

I don't know if I am allowed to do this but...I've been looking around at some blogs from around the world and I've found one blog to be particularly compelling...Daily Dose of Imagery has some really beautiful pictures...you all should go check them out. OMG this is just beautiful.

Org. Comm Spring '05

Hey People!!!
This is Dawn from class. Isn't blogging fun?! Well....I don't have much to say right now, but here are a few links that I think are cool:

Illvibe Collectives is my brother's website. Here you can listen to some cool music and stuff!!! Check out DJ Lil'Dave, he's my bro and he's really cool :o)

The school that I am attending now is Marymount Manhattan College.

I always can find anything I need on Craigs List.

Check out these websites!!!!

Me and My Daddy

Me and My Daddy
Originally uploaded by D3faithfully.

This is a picture of me with my dad when I was in the Miss Black Rowan pageant in 2003.