The Long Tail

Do not have extra space to store anything more in your room? 

The increasing of entertaining and information sources have create a problem to shopkeepers of record stores and bookstores. It has creates a problem of lacking of large space for so large amount of sources. And this is why, long tail has played an important role. 

Long tail has provides shopkeepers a great place to store their large amounts of sources. It has also increase the demand and interest of audiences on buying a book or CD label. As what Anderson has mentioned in the article, online bookseller - Amazon.com has "created the Touching the Void phenomenon by combining infinite shelf space with real-time information about buying trends and public opinion." Online bookseller has brings a buying trends for a not-so-good selling books and many people has aware of this book. Through the public opinion that have commented in online bookseller sites, it has attracted people to buy the books after reading good public opinions in the sites. 

Through online bookseller, people can easily aware of obscure books. There are unlimited selection in the sites and people just have to order, pay and save the book as a file in computer. Compare to bookstores, people have to walk to the shop and buy the books. However, they might not found the books they want as bookstores has limited space to store the books. In online bookstore sites, there are many different selection of books for audiences to choose and even old books from Journalists from many years back or non-famous book. Online bookstore sites's admin does not need to worry about the space of storing such much amount of e-books as long tail has gave audiences a big place to search for their books. 

Long tail has provided a big space for people to expand their business. Through long tail, business people can selling their sources without paying any production fee, distribution fee and more. In a shop, they need to sell their sources like CD or books to gain a certain amount of money to get back the profit. This can really bring a big advantage to the sources distributor and audiences as well. Audiences can found unlimited interesting sources and sources distributor can earn profit without paying other extra fees. 

It is true that long tail bring a lot of advantages to the society. But there are also some rules that applied into this new economy. 

1. Make everything available

Will you feel depressed when you can't find the music CD you want in Label stores? I am sure this will not happen when everything goes online. Let's use iTunes has example. iTunes provides many different music from the world. From jazz music, pop music, kpop music and more. It covers big coverage of music. Besides music from singers, they also provided covered music from Youtubers. This is a big attractions as many audiences like cover version of music than original one. Youtubers will usually provides a link and said "you can purchase this covered music in iTunes". This is the rule. Make everything available, no matter what kind of music, books or any sources audiences need, it must in online since there is a big space for them to post it up.

2. Cut the price in half. Now lower it. 

People like cheap stuff, especially when people see the word DISCOUNT. Same to online stores. In my opinion, low prices product will always gain more attention because audiences might think there is a risk in online buying. Giving discount is a good way of increasing sales and create awareness on that source at the same time. Customers are the king, we give what they like and provides things that satisfy them. They like discounts and cheap stuffs, so we give them discounts! :)

3. Help me find it.

Through long tail, a lot of sources have transfer from shops to online shops. This is a important rule for online shoppers to sell their sources. If audiences can't find the sources they want, they will not able to buy the sources and online shoppers will lose a business. Search engine can be provided in the site itself so people can search in the website. To help audiences find the sources successfully, name of the sources have to be keywords for example, name of the author, name of the singer, keywords in lyrics and more. Help audiences up, they'll thank you by paying you money. :)

Is long tail good or bad? Long tail has lead people to download sources illegally. People uploaded different sources online and let audiences to download illegally. In China, there are many different websites like www.sogou.com.my, www.baidu.com.my for people to download musics without any charges. This is the disadvantage. Long tail has provided a big space and people use it for unethical activities. 

Sources and data are all digitalized now. People now can access and purchase sources from another country by online without flying over there. Digital sites like ebay, iTunes, Amazon.com and more play an important role and thanks to long tail, these sites are growing rapidly and it provides sources from different area and people which boost up the audiences' demand on entertainments. In future world, people might fully depends on online shops for searching old or new sources and CD shops or bookstores might disappear soon. I feel sorry for traditional books lover and also CD collector. :( 

Media Convergence

Media Convergence! 

Compare to our good old days, we used phone to call, use gameboy to plays games, use TV to watch drama, use radio to listens songs and more. We need many different gadgets to do many things. We can't multitask by only using one gadget. The changes of our society has boost up our demand on entertainment and getting information. This is why media convergence happened.


Media convergence is more than simply a technological shift.
(Henry Jenkins)


From what I have understand from this statement, it is basically means media convergence is the changes of old media to new media. New era has brought a big changes to the media. Media started to co-operate with each other to create a new media to provides people more functions. Let's take mobile phone as an example. We used mobile phones to make calls and sending short messages, but now, people used mobile phone to check on social networking sites, play games, sending e-mails, taking pictures with adding different effects and so on. This is what we call media convergence.


Media convergence has brought a big impact to the society. Why do I say so? Firstly, I think media convergence helps people a lot in their career. People now can access to Internet through mobile phone or Ipad to reply e-mails from clients or bosses. They do not need to go back to their office for just finding a important file, but only by checking through their database in their laptop or even their e-mails. Compare to old generation, people can only check information of company by checking files or hand-written form of documents which store in their office. Now, people can check it any time, any place. Media convergence brings big convenience to employers and employees.


Secondly, I personally think Media convergence has give entertainment to lifeless people. Before I explained why, please let me define lifeless people. I think lifeless people is like students, employers or employees, housewives and more. Their life is full of works and they have less entertainments compare to others do. With Media convergence, they can multitasks. For example like housewives, they can play with their smart phones while waiting calls from children; students can go on social networking sites (SNS) to socialize with friends and play games in SNS while researching on assignments. Thanks to media convergence, people now can multitasks with just using one media which is something convenient and it saved the buying cost of a few technology gadgets for different purpose.


'Convergence is also a risk for creative industries because it requires media companies to rethink old assumptions about what it means to consume media', said Henry Jenkins. Old consumers always prefer to use traditional media on getting information or other uses. The traditional media including newspaper, TV, radio, which do not provide several functions in one media. It has became a habit for old consumers to look for information by different media. However, new consumers are more prefer to do things conveniently. New consumers now use only one media to access anything. For example, people now can use iPhone to call, sending short messages, checking emails, playing games and more. This is what I mean convenient. People can multitask by using only one media. 


"This next generation audience research focuses attention on what consumers do with media content, seeing each subsequent interaction as valuable because it reinforces their relationship to the series and, potentially, its sponsors." (Henry Jenkins) In the future, consumers might have different views towards media. Audiences research on how consumers use media in the future. Then producers can only predict and understand what kind of media they should use to fit in with future audiences' behavior of using media to get media contents. Producer now may hardly predict consumers' thinking or the behavior of using media because consumers now are more concern about the feel of using media but not the usage or function of the media. To send information to new consumers, producers have to be really understand to the consumers so they can choose which media to convey the message to the consumers. 


In a nutshell, media convergence has changed people's life. It has brings convenience to the society and new consumers are more prefer media convergence than traditional media. However, there are still some old consumers are still prefer and support old media. To target old and new media, producers need to do a lot of research on audiences and research on what are the best media to target them. 

Free Culture

Imagine if someone dress like you, walk like you, talk like you, laugh like you, act like you.. Would you think it's annoying? For me, having own identity is important. 

Is copying or imitating someone's property unethical? For me, copying someone's property without permission is unethical. But, I think it is okay if you get permission from the original author and he or her approved. 

Synchronized sound had been introduced to film a year earlier in the movie The Jazz Singer. That success led Walt Disney to copy the technique and mix sound with cartoons.

(Lawrence Lessig) 

Walt Disney has copied the technique of synchronized sound and implemented into cartoons. They have successfully attracted audiences. Here's the question. Why no one will think Walt Disney has copied The Jazz Singer's the technique of synchronized sound? In my opinion, I think it is because The Jazz Singer is a film and Walt Disney is a animation. This is the differences which make them look different from each other.  No one will care Walt Disney has copied the technique but people are concerned how they implemented into cartoon and how they amazed them. And yes, Walt Disney has successfully make the audiences amazed with Disney's creativity. What if this happen in 21st century? I bet it will involves lawsuits. With intellectual property law, a person's creative property such as music, films and more will be protected.  

Let's talk about Doujinshi. I like how Lawrence Lessig describe Doujinshi as copycat comics. It is a best term to use to describe Doujinshi. Of course, according to Japanese law, copycat comics are illegal because they are copying the original work and implement it into different story line. However, Doujinshi has become a norm to Japanese and it has brought up Manga's market. "Everyone would be worse off if doujinshi were banned, so the law does not ban doujinshi", said Lawrence Lessig. Yes, I agree. People now might not so concern about the originality of work but about the entertainment they gain from the work. I feel sad to the author of the works. The author used a long period of time to create an original work and now it has imitated by others. The anonymous might gain much more than the original author.    

Everyone wants freedom, that's why free culture occurs. However, an argument argues that how about original author's right? This is why different kind of laws occur. It protected the rights of authors but at the same time, they provide free contents to the public. For example, public domain. "The public domain is a "lawyer-free zone.", said Lessig. Public can get free software or contents from public domain, the contents are not protected by lawsuits but free for public. This is a good way to maintain the free culture and protect the original property of authors.

To conclude, public 'wants' free culture and original works 'needs' intellectual property law to protect them from imitating. How to balance these two? I don't know. But I'm sure that our world and cyberworld both need freedom and law as well. Without law, our world and cyberworld will not have any limitation and the number of crimes will increase; without freedom, people will not have rights to comment and speak out their own opinions to the public. 

Another question, do face has copyright as well? Found something interesting on Internet.  

Left: Jay Chou     Right: Chen Bo Chun     

  

In case you do not know who is Jay Chou, Jay Chou is a Taiwanese famous singer. The guy on the right is just a ordinary guy from Taiwan and he looks like Jay Chou. For your information, they are not brothers! If faces are protected by intellectual property law, they might involved into lawsuits soon.