The long tail effect is a kind of satistical pattern describing the distribution. It will be appropriate when a larger amount of data is getting far away from the center and the head of distribution. (Milosz) From the marketing’s point of view, the long tail effect is presenting a better way to hit the consumers for more attention and sales. However, from a YouTuber’s point of view, it is producing both advantages and limitations.
From YouTuber’s perspective, the long tail effect is helping them to hit the audience’s interest. By applying this effect to the search engine of YouTube, the producers can easily search the trend. To raise the attention of the public and increase the numbers of audiences by following the search result. They can be well-know easily to make a video on the most famous topic.
However, it is acting the limitation to those YouTubers at the same time. According to my observation and experience of using YouTube, the calculation system of YouuTube is also using the long tail effect. It leads to a phenomenon that the producers are limited by the “Famous” and “Trend”. YouTube will choose to push the video with the same or similar theme to the audiences by collecting data on the historical record and the views of the video. Under the calculation system, a loop of “famous” is formatted, and those audiences become hard to find the videos in other topics. To keep the channel running with attention, the producers can only produce the videos in the same or relevant materials constantly. It causes a limitation to the creators. They will disappear from the community easily if they try to upload something different as YouTube is going to stop pushing your video to the audiences under the calculation system.
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References:
- Milosz K., ‘The Long Tail Effect theory in practise explained’, Milosz Krasinski, viewed 5 October 2020, < https://miloszkrasinski.com/the-long-tail-effect-theory-in-practise-explained/ >.
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