The Economist Technology Quarterly, May 7^th 2005

Profiting from obscurity What the “long-tail” means for the economics of e-commerce

1)      Explain the trendy new term “long-tail”

2)      Why could unprofitable transactions be improved thanks to electronic sales and distribution?

3)      Take the example of book sales to illustrate question 2

4)      What is collaborative filtering?

5)      Show how online businesses like Amazon exploit the effects of the “long-tail”.