I was reading Chris Anderson’s Long Tail today (book/blog) and hit this facinating graph. (pg 128)
What it shows is the discrepincy between actual movie revenue and what would be predicted by a power law function. As movies get less popular (as you move down the movie-ranking), you would expect to see a logrithmic drop-off in revenue. Instead, once you pass the top 100 movies, you see a sharp drop off. This is because movies beyond the top 100 just don’t get shown. It’s not worth it to the theatres.
So that’s cool.
But I was thinking, “What would a movie look like that grossed $10??”
The answer is YouTube. Even the worst of these little movies will generate at least a little ad revenue. Especially considering their essentially infinite lifetime. That’s the the red bit I’ve colored in.
So here’s a convergence of the attention economy, Web 2.0 and the long tail: Items for sale at the far end of the long tale are cheap enough that you can sell them for merely attention. (Even given today’s crude methods of converting attention to dollars: AdSense and banner ads.)
Ah, so here are the micropayments everyone was talking about 10 years ago. 🙂