As I am working my way through the 23 things, I am having a wonderful time but keep finding myself thinking about whether our customers will really use these 23 things. I help customers every day who are not even proficient with a mouse and keyboard, let alone Flickr and Twitter.
However, after reading the five perspectives in the article "Web 2.0: Where will the next generation of the web take libraries?" as well as the Wikipedia article and its references, I started thinking about this "long tail" concept mentioned in the article "Library 2.0: Service for the next-generation library" (http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6365200.html). (I also looked at an earlier article, "The long tail" (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html?pg=1&topic=tail&topic_set= ). As the Library Journal article explains, "the demand for movies or books that are not hits far outnumbers the demand for those that are hits. Match those nonhits with the people who are interested in seeing them, and suddenly you have a group of constituents equal to or greater than those who want to see and read the hits."
So, which customers are we currently underserving? Maybe we will hear new voices as we begin to join in these social web spaces. Maybe we will find ourselves serving a whole population we didn't know existed.
However, after reading the five perspectives in the article "Web 2.0: Where will the next generation of the web take libraries?" as well as the Wikipedia article and its references, I started thinking about this "long tail" concept mentioned in the article "Library 2.0: Service for the next-generation library" (http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6365200.html). (I also looked at an earlier article, "The long tail" (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html?pg=1&topic=tail&topic_set= ). As the Library Journal article explains, "the demand for movies or books that are not hits far outnumbers the demand for those that are hits. Match those nonhits with the people who are interested in seeing them, and suddenly you have a group of constituents equal to or greater than those who want to see and read the hits."
So, which customers are we currently underserving? Maybe we will hear new voices as we begin to join in these social web spaces. Maybe we will find ourselves serving a whole population we didn't know existed.
Photo is by J Pride.
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