To help people soak in recent academic research and its conclusions, I wrote a paper on re-thinking Christ Anderson's seminal book "The Long Tail." As you may recall, the July issue of the Harvard Business Review has an article written by a Harvard Business School associate professor. "Should Businesses Invest In The Long Tail?" comes to conclusions that are very different than some espoused by Anderson.

Anita Elberse, the author of the HBR article, wrote in a response to a response by Anderson that she hopes business managers' decisions "are grounded not in romantic notions of the impact of technology, but are based on empirical evidence of what is actually taking place." I fear some romantic notions have replaced more realistic notions of why consumers purchase what they purchase.

The main issue, as I see it, is whether or not consumers will use the availability of incredible amounts of content on the Internet to pursue niches more popular titles. Are consumers ditching the hits? Evidence points to a greater market share of hits and a lengthening and flattening of the tail (meaning niche titles are less popular than in years past).

Download: Rethink The Long Tail