In ‘The Long Tail” Chris Anderson gives a brief evolution of the way commerce was done. He talks about our past consumer behaviors, which has changed from the traditional catalog, purchase, driving to the store, buying products over the phone; to the latest purchasing practice: E-commerce. In chapter one, he explains the major changes the mass media is going through. He explains that all mass media audience has decline over the years, especially since the early 1990’s when the Internet emerged. A great amount audience who relied on books, radio, TV, newspapers and magazines has been shifting to find more products and services Online.
Anderson explains that the audience for products or for mass media consumption is not disappearing; he says that the audience is just shifting and finding their own niche. The fact that the mass media was obsessed with creating homogeneous programs for viewers did not mea that viewers liked what they watched, listened or read. It just meant people had fewer options to choose from. With the emergence of Internet all that has changed. Now every consumer from any part of the world can choose from hundreds of thousands of options that once they did not have.
Internet has revolutionized our lives, the way business is done, there is not time or space to choose anything from anywhere. Now consumers are finding their own niche, their own time, their own interest without having to listen to the big mass media outlets. As Rupert Murdoch once said, “people want control of their media, instead of being controlled by it.” People are still consuming but they are fragmenting according to their tastes and need. . For example, now it is possible to listen to a radio station from another part of the world, watch our favorite programs online or search information that it is not possible to find in the local library. The Internet has become the new “Whish Book” idea invented by Richard Sears, in which anything can be found but what it has done in only one place, “ Internet has eliminated most of the physical barriers of buying” now we have unlimited selection to choose from (Chris Anderson, 49).
