I’ve been thinking a lot about the changing media landscape over recent weeks, and will try to put together a more comprehensive post soon. But, for this Monday morning, I wanted to a link about “The Wisdom of Crowds”.

The Dirty Little Secret About the “Wisdom of Crowds”- There is No Crowd, which talks about research from CMU that shows that “crowd” ratings on services like Amazon, IMDb and Digg are highly dependent on a few key community members.

This is one of a number of anecdotes that has convinced me that the “Long Tail” effect (the idea that broader choice helps niche products) is not really occurring online. Instead, what social media does is allow people to cluster more quickly around a few winners.

I think we’re seeing this phenomenon around the spectacular success of Paranormal Activity, which has used a smart online marketing campaign to generate buzz.  That then feeds upon itself to make the movie a must-see for teen and college-age audiences.  This kind of social clustering, I believe, occurs in every niche… with the net effect that the “tail” becomes shorter, not longer.  Studies of the real world are beginning to bear this out.

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