Last symposium we talked about Apple. Adrian used the corporation in terms of the Power Law graphs to give us a sense of their practical usage. As it went, individual popular music tracks that sold considerably more (and therefore formed the ‘head’ of the graph) were still less profitable than the aggregate of tracks that sold much less (and formed the ‘tail’).

This is the main reason behind Apple’s decision to preserve those tracks that formed the tail; it didn’t cost them more to store them (unless you’re counting up to well past ten decimal points), and it offered a continuous even if irregular flow of income to those who owned the rights to the tracks. As Jason put it, it’s a win win situation, except some win a lot more than others.

I guess we can try to change the analogy to suit the internet, if the funds received by each track sold equates to reputation or information being earned by each connection made. It works with FaceBook too, the millions (if not billions) of us ‘average’ people currently on FaceBook offer a lot more information than those few ‘important’ celebrities that reel in all the likes. But then doesn’t that demonstrate opposite reasoning with the argument behind the 80/20 rule?

To be continued…