A Long Tale

The Long Tail seems to be everywhere. Tonight at the SDForum Emerging Technology SIG, we had a panel discussion on Music and Metadata, inspired by the Long Tail. At the same time Scott Rosenberg 's blog has some musings on blogs and what constitutes a successful blog, also inspired by the Long Tail.

While all this collaborative filtering stuff is interesting, I wonder how useful it really is. For example, my Netflix queue is at least 2 years long, and seems to grow every time I look at it. However they are always badgering me to rate movies so that they can recommend more. Well I have news for Netflix, I do not need any recommendations, I already have enough to keep them profitable for some time to come.