Everyone seems to be talking about "The Long Tail" - the concept that the Internet is letting people find lots of niche content, not just the mass favorites.   People have been talking about this ever since Amazon first opened its virtual doors a decade ago, but the "long tail" phrase first came into vogue with Chris Anderson's article in Wired a couple of years ago, and with his recent book of the same title.

And of course, there's a lot of truth in this.   The Internet lets you find all sorts of things, choosing from thousands of books or DVDs or millions of tracks of music, and so on.   Because of the way online retailing works, e-commerce sites can have a nearly unlimited stock, far more than any physical retailer.

Anderson's book makes it clear that he knows this isn't a new process, and it isn't just the Internet that has led to this explosion of choice.    He explains how the 1897 Sears "Wish Book" was an early example of exploding choice, and how things like specialized publications and cable TV channels also led to people expecting and getting more niche content.  But it was the ability of the Internet to gather so many people together, and then add tools to help them find the things they are looking for that made things so dramatically different.  This insight goes back to Jeff Bezos and the founding of Amazon, and has been adopted by all the successful Internet retailers since then

Anderson talks about how in traditional retail, you have the 80/20 rule, with 20 percent of the products accounting for 80 percent of the revenue.  Online, instead, he sees the "98 percent rule." Where 98 percent of all the possible choices get chosen by someone, and where the 90 percent that is only available online accounts for half the revenue and two-thirds of the profits.   And he explains how both massive inventor and the filters that help people find what they are really looking for are crucial ingredients.

Basically, Anderson's theory is that mass culture is fading, and being replaced by a series of niches; in the subtitle of the book, "Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More."

Is this all a good thing?   To Anderson, the answer is yes, and he spends a fair amount of time bashing physical retailers and mass media.
I'm not entirely convinced.  Now I'm as big of a fan of niche content as anyone.   Now, I love "niche content" as much as anyone.     Thanks to services like Napster, Rhapsody, and Yahoo Music, I'm more likely to listen to Ryan Adams than the hot Gnarls Barkley.  I prefer Veronica Mars to American Idol. And I love how Amazon and other online retailers have made it easy for me to find the books and DVDs I really want.

But I think mass culture has its place in helping us function as a society.  When we can all talk about World Cup Football and American Idol, they become not just entertainment, but a part of the cultural conversation.   While I don't always agree with the choices of the New York Times or NBC News, they provide the basis of discussion that you read on The Drudge Report or the Daily Kos.

And while in some ways, the niches have gotten bigger, in other ways the Internet seems to make mass information bigger and faster.   For instance, when there is a news story, we can all find out about it nearly instantly if we're online.   And things like movies are getting even more buzz even faster, leading to much bigger opening weekends (see, for instance, the second Pirates of the Caribbean). 

It may be that we're getting more mass culture, more quickly.  It may not be the "short head" vs the long tail, but it may also be the "fast head" vs. the "slow tail"

But in the end, it's not one or the other.   Niche content will grow, and new tools make it easier for more and more people to be content producers, not just consumers.  But in the end, a lot of people still want to reach a mass audience, and as part of a society, we need a mass market as well.      Both will coexist, and get stronger, and that may be the real benefit of net communications.