Nice to be niche

I have been steadily reading textbooks for the upcoming finals and one, The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, has really captured my interest. The premise is that the value of hits (mainstream offerings, such as blockbuster films) is diminishing and being overtaken by niche and targeted products or services (the many genres of music, documentary films that never make it to the cinema). This encapsulates how the world and society is developing, with more and more people blogging, myspacing and facebooking. Choice is now neverending and we, as consumers, thrive off this. Hits are still big, but the aggregation of all of these niches, is becoming steadily more powerful than the hits. Cool hey?

This concept bypasses traditional marketing segmentation, because we can't be segmented into perfect groups. We have many interests. Me, as a vegetarian, am interested in vegetarian restaurants but at the same time, I enjoy writing comedy scripts about two carnivores. Where do I fit?

This fuels the online debate too. The PR concept of publics does not translate well on the internet. Users are so fragmented and demonstrate extremes and diversity of interests that we cannot groups publics into 'consumers' and 'politicians' anymore. Instead, we have to think about what issues are surrounding our organisation and who are involved in those issues. Activists are pretty important, but then those who may stumble across us when googling a random subject, should still be considered. Grunig will live on forever.

The choice available to us is immense and the Internet fuels this further. It is affecting our lives to no ends. My other half recently joined up to Facebook and we haven't had a conversation where it isn't mentioned (geeks to the core, I know!). I am now pleasantly surprised when my mobile phone beeps with a text message, as I currently do the majority of my socialising via social networking sites.

A very interesting and exciting development. Embrace it fellow geeks.