I couldn’t resist the title…

Just a quick observation that I haven’t seen in the book or any of the online literature on the subject of The Long Tail.

The moment that changed the way I use YouTube was the moment I started to assume that any video I might be looking for would be there. Before, YouTube was just a collection of random, interesting and funny clips and subject of a lot of Friday emails. Now, YouTube is where I go when I want to see videos of events that I missed on the news, or never made it to the mainstream – and I usually find them. And as a result I go there a lot more.

The same is true of all the other typical Long Tail services: Amazon, Netflix, Ebay, … When the offering – in the mind of the consumer – changes from “random things” to “everything”, that’s when they get their mojo.