On Long tails and minorities

It sucks to be a part of the long tail.

Of late there's been a quite a bit of talk and coverage about the long tail. Sure, there's huge value in mining the long tail. How can you organize content so that the long tail users can find it? And similar other business mantras. No debate there.

But imagine what it is like to be a part of the long tail. You are a minority that very few people care about. You make so little difference to the democratic system that ignoring you or antagonizing you probably makes little difference to the state of affairs. Here is an example. I recently had to reset the password for my small business online banking account with Bank of America. And I did not remember the one PIN number they needed to be able to reset the password. So I called their custoemr service. I challenge you to connect with the representative who can tell you what to do or who will even say they are the right person to help you. I form a small minority of their customers, and on top of that, my need for small business online banking for the state of California probably is an even more remote edge case for them. And it is no fun to be an edge case.

This is one area where the Web, potentially, can help. Whether you are a part of the long tail, or the thick head, what you are looking for never really seems too far. But is this really true? How many times have you changed your keywords on a search engine to different combinations in order to tweak the results? Can the entire web really be ranked in one order of usefulness for everyone?