Sixteen Scientist Do The Long Tail

AMSTERDAM - Sixteen young scientists do a strange experiment. What will happen if they publish sites about a niche of a niche of a niche? Meet The Long Tailers!

Sixteen young scientist started an one year long ‘fun experiment’ with the Long Tail theory, according to Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired. Just six days after The Long Tailers came online, the students are already on the radar of big media companies. They have a private dinner with Paramount and Heineken to explain the experiment: what will happen if you write about something so small that most other people don’t care? Is the Long Tail long enough to attract visitors and if yes, how interested are they in the content?’Henk van Ess, Internet entrepreneur and lecturer of the University of Amsterdam, asked the students to write blogs with three specific instructions. ,,Your subject shouldn’t be interesting for me or others. The blogs must be authentic and not fake. And your subject can’t have more hits in Google then 1.000.000.” Some of the ideas, like a site about ‘how the Mac changed my life’ were killed right away because they weren’t odd or authentic enough. ,,We want to test if there is an end to the The Long Tail”, says Van Ess. Topics that made it: vibrant Icelandic electronic music scene, bread with chocolate sprinkles, the pirate of Lipari, boardercross racing and international kibboetsj children.Chris Anderson thinks the students could succeed. He studied all sixteen blogs. ,,Well, they all look very niche! I suspect if the authors are serious about these subjects and can do a good job of keeping them active and on-target, they will find a devoted community of readers and become #1 for their keywords on Google.

Welcome to an one year long experiment to test the theory that if you have a niche, you will have the highest attention, but low numbers of visitors. And if you have targeted advertizing, the response rate will be higher then for a popular site. So the theory says. It’s not an experiment on a grand scale. It’s a fun experiment. But all participants are serious about pursuing their strange interests online.