The answer is: it depends.

The question was asked today by Lester Craft over at Usertainment Watch:

How fat will online video’s “tail” be? (That is, the virtually infinite period of time following the burst of views a video gets upon its initial appearance.)Chris Anderson’s notion of the long tail is that it’s typically quite thin or flat, and that it is primarily the extended length of availability (vs. the comparatively short life of products sold in typical brick-and-mortar stores) that enables online offerings to remain profitable as many small sales accumulate over time.

This is a question I’ve seen surface a number of times, recently.  It doesn’t seem like a difficult nut to crack, though.  Content is content, whether it is displayed and monetized online or off. How fat or thin the tail is depends entirely on the quality and genre of the video in question.

Let’s use some Old Media examples, for a second.  Unless it is a particularly historic event, very rarely will you find any replay value in a repeat episode The Daily Show, as we’re finding out during this writer’s strike. On the other hand, it’s been close to two decades, and Seinfeld still plays well in re-runs.

Likewise, in New Media examples, I rather doubt there is much of a long tail or replay value in an old episode of Webb Alert, but Mahalo Daily and Ask A Ninja aren’t current events based, and will have a substantial amount of value in the long tail.

That isn’t to say there isn’t value in the current events based show, but the question is that of tail, and in terms of that, particularly entertaining UGC or produced online video will follow most of the same rules as traditional entertainment.

Is there a tail in news based content at all?
Indeed there is, but the size of the tail is much different, and is based highly on the  timeliness and other value factors of the content. For an example of what I mean, I did a podcast earlier this year, in which I revealed some information given to me by a contact within Google about what was then termed the gPhone.  I teased it a bit on a blog post, but the real meat of the information was contained within an audio podcast.  The statistics for that particular podcast far overshadowed any other traffic patterns my podcast experienced, and not only on the day the episode went out.

The show notes for that particular episode remained in the top 20 results for the search term “gPhone” up until Android was actually announced.  Any time another gPhone rumor was leaked anywhere in the blogosphere or the mainstream press, downloads of that episode would shoot up into the thousands, despite the fact that it aged several months.

After Android was officially announced, however, the show stopped getting downloads. The tail eventually ended, since the public was no longer hungry for rumor.

That is a rare case in which there is a long tail for news based content.  Most of my rich media content I’ve generated over the years does not experience that sort of usage.  In statistical terms, about twice a year will one of my podcasts experience a long tail/viral effect like that.

So, I should stay away from current events in my videos?
Not really.  Decide what you do.  If you’re primarily entertainment based, play the long tail, and don’t tie your stuff down to what’s going on in the world.  But news based stuff, for some of us, is easier to produce.  Doing a daily one hour audio podcast, for me, is easier than writing one thirty minute comedy per month.  Your mileage may vary, but the value in news based content is the higher likelyhood of repeat customers and lower cost of production. Going into news based content, though, one shouldn’t count on the long tail being there for every single episode, as is possible for some entertainment based productions.

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