《The Long Tai(长尾)》Part 2
Nov 30, 2008 社会科学常识
来源：yeeyan.com
But most of us want more than just hits. Everyone’s taste departs from the mainstream somewhere, and the more we explore alternatives, the more we’re drawn to them. Unfortunately, in recent decades such alternatives have been pushed to the fringes by pumped-up marketing vehicles built to order by industries that desperately need them. 但是，仅有流行的东西，对于我们当中的大多数来说，是远远不够的。每一个人的口味，都会或多或少地偏离主流。而对这些主流之外的东西探索得越多，我们就会越发沉迷于此。不幸的是，在最近几十年里，这些主流之外的东西统统被扫到了角落里——为传统娱乐业服务的市场营销对此根本不屑一顾。
Hit-driven economics is a creation of an age without enough room to carry everything for everybody. Not enough shelf space for all the CDs, DVDs, and games produced. Not enough screens to show all the available movies. Not enough channels to broadcast all the TV programs, not enough radio waves to play all the music created, and not enough hours in the day to squeeze everything out through either of those sets of slots. 以流行为主导的经济是旧时代的产物，在这个时代里，没有足够的库存空间来存放所有的东西，以满足每个人的需要。比如说，没有足够的货架来存放所制作的CD、 DVD和游戏；没有足够的银幕来放映所有的电影；没有足够的频道来播放所有的电视节目；也没有足够的无线电波段来播放所有的音乐；甚至没有足够的时间把所有的内容传播给用户。
This is the world of scarcity. Now, with online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance. And the differences are profound. 这是一个资源稀缺的世界。但是，随着在线分销和零售模式的出现，我们正迈入一个资源极大丰富的世界。这两个世界之间有着天壤之别。
To see how, meet Robbie Vann-Adib�, the CEO of Ecast, a digital jukebox company whose barroom players offer more than 150,000 tracks - and some surprising usage statistics. He hints at them with a question that visitors invariably get wrong: “What percentage of the top 10,000 titles in any online media store (Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, or any other) will rent or sell at least once a month?” Robbie Vann-Adibe 是数字点唱公司 Ecast 的首席执行官。该公司有超过15万首的曲目供其网络内的酒吧点唱。有一些统计数据非常令人惊奇，Robbie 总是爱据此来向参观者们提问，而所有的人无一例外都会答错。这个问题就是：在随便一家在线媒体商店（像Netflix，iTunes，Amazon，等等）的排行榜前1万首曲目里，那些每月至少被租出去或卖出去一次的曲目占多大百分比呢？
Most people guess 20 percent, and for good reason: We’ve been trained to think that way. The 80-20 rule, also known as Pareto’s principle (after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who devised the concept in 1906), is all around us. Only 20 percent of major studio films will be hits. Same for TV shows, games, and mass-market books - 20 percent all. The odds are even worse for major-label CDs, where fewer than 10 percent are profitable, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. 大多数人都会猜是20%，原因很简单：我们一直都是被这样教的。二八定律，也被称为帕累托定律（由意大利经济学家Vilfredo Pareto在1906年提出），在我们周围随处可见。由顶级制片公司制作的电影中，只有20%能够成为畅销片。这种情况同样发生在电视剧、游戏和通俗读物市场上。对于顶级音乐制作公司推出的CD来说，这个百分比还会更低。根据美国唱片业协会（Recording Industry Association of America）的统计，只有不到百分之十的唱片能够盈利。
But the right answer, says Vann-Adib�, is 99 percent. There is demand for nearly every one of those top 10,000 tracks. He sees it in his own jukebox statistics; each month, thousands of people put in their dollars for songs that no traditional jukebox anywhere has ever carried. 但是，Vann-Adibe 告诉我们说，正确的答案应该是99%，也就是说，市场对于排行榜前1万首曲目当中的几乎每一首都会有所需求。Vann-Adibe 在他自己公司的统计数据中观察到了这一现象：每个月里都有数以千计的听众花钱点唱那些在其他传统点唱服务中根本就不可能找到的曲目。
People get Vann-Adib�’s question wrong because the answer is counterintuitive in two ways. The first is we forget that the 20 percent rule in the entertainment industry is about hits, not sales of any sort. We’re stuck in a hit-driven mindset - we think that if something isn’t a hit, it won’t make money and so won’t return the cost of its production. We assume, in other words, that only hits deserve to exist. But Vann-Adib�, like executives at iTunes, Amazon, and Netflix, has discovered that the “misses” usually make money, too. And because there are so many more of them, that money can add up quickly to a huge new market. 人们之所以答错 Vann-Adibe 的问题，是因为这个问题的正确答案在两方面上都与人们的直觉背道而驰。第一点就是，在娱乐业中，二八定律是关于流行的定律，与销售没有任何关系。我们被禁锢在以流行为主导的惯性思维中——我们以为如果一个东西不流行的话，就不可能赚钱，也就不可能返还制作成本。也就是说，我们已经先入为主地认为，只有流行的东西，才有存在的价值。但是，Vann-Adibe，也包括iTune、Amazon和Netflix的管理者们，却发现那些非流行的东西同样能够赚钱；并且由于数量庞大，其盈利总和足以形成一个新兴的巨大市场。
With no shelf space to pay for and, in the case of purely digital services like iTunes, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees, a miss sold is just another sale, with the same margins as a hit. A hit and a miss are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability. 对于iTunes这样的纯数字服务来说，由于不再需要货架，也没有制造成本和分销费用，卖出一件非流行品与卖出一件流行品之间没有任何区别，它们的边际利润都是一样的。流行与非流行有同样的经济基础，它们都只不过是数据库中的一条记录，等待对其需求做出响应，因而具有同样的存货价值。于是乎，流行不再是利润的唯一代名词了。
The second reason for the wrong answer is that the industry has a poor sense of what people want. Indeed, we have a poor sense of what we want. We assume, for instance, that there is little demand for the stuff that isn’t carried by Wal-Mart and other major retailers; if people wanted it, surely it would be sold. The rest, the bottom 80 percent, must be subcommercial at best. 第二个原因在于业界对于人们的需求没有正确的认识。事实上，我们对于自己想要什么也并不是很清楚。比如说，我们以为一件商品，如果没有摆在沃尔玛（Wal-Mart）或其它主要零售商的货架上的话，那么对这件商品的需求量一定很低；否则沃尔玛们没有理由不卖它。至于剩下的80%，充其量也只能算是准商业化（subcommerical）的产品。
But as egalitarian as Wal-Mart may seem, it is actually extraordinarily elitist. Wal-Mart must sell at least 100,000 copies of a CD to cover its retail overhead and make a sufficient profit; less than 1 percent of CDs do that kind of volume. What about the 60,000 people who would like to buy the latest Fountains of Wayne or Crystal Method album, or any other nonmainstream fare? They have to go somewhere else. Bookstores, the megaplex, radio, and network TV can be equally demanding. We equate mass market with quality and demand, when in fact it often just represents familiarity, savvy advertising, and broad if somewhat shallow appeal. What do we really want? We’re only just discovering, but it clearly starts with more. 事实上，沃尔玛并不像看上去的那样大众化，它所出售的商品都是选之又选的。一张CD，沃尔玛必须卖出超过10万张拷贝，才有可能收回成本并产生足够的利润。而只有不到1%的CD能够达到这个销量。对于那6万个想要购买最新的《Fountains of Wayne》或《Crystal Method》专辑，或是其它非主流音乐的顾客，该怎么办呢？他们只好到别的地方去找了。书店、电影院、电台和电视台等，都会同样的挑剔。我们把大众市场（mass market）与质量和需求等同起来，而事实上，它只不过代表了千篇一律的重复性、狂轰乱炸的广告效应以及泛泛而肤浅的诉求。我们到底想要什么？我们还正在探索，但很明显地，我们想要的绝对要比这多。
To get a sense of our true taste, unfiltered by the economics of scarcity, look at Rhapsody, a subscription-based streaming music service (owned by RealNetworks) that currently offers more than 735,000 tracks. 为了了解我们那种不受资源稀缺的经济所限制的真正口味，让我们来看看Rhapsody吧。这是一个允许其订阅用户下载流媒体音乐的服务（属于RealNetworks)，目前提供的曲目超过73万5千首。
Chart Rhapsody’s monthly statistics and you get a “power law” demand curve that looks much like any record store’s, with huge appeal for the top tracks, tailing off quickly for less popular ones. But a really interesting thing happens once you dig below the top 40,000 tracks, which is about the amount of the fluid inventory (the albums carried that will eventually be sold) of the average real-world record store. Here, the Wal-Marts of the world go to zero - either they don’t carry any more CDs, or the few potential local takers for such fringy fare never find it or never even enter the store. 如果把Rhapsody每月的统计数据绘成图表的话，你会得到一条描述需求的“幂次法则”（Power Law）曲线，它看上去跟其它音像商店的曲线很相像：最热门的曲目有非常大的需求，随着热门度的降低，需求量急剧减少。但是当你仔细研究排行榜上4万名开外的曲目时，有趣的事情发生了。4万首曲目通常是一个中等音像店的流动库存量（即最终会被售出的专辑）。沃尔玛等其他传统零售商的曲线在这里变成了零—— 或者是因为它们根本就不经营这么多的CD，或者是因为这些边缘曲目的本地爱好者们没能在商店里找到它们或者根本就没有迈进过商店的门。
The Rhapsody demand, however, keeps going. Not only is every one of Rhapsody’s top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it’s just a few people a month, somewhere in the country. 而在Rhapsody的曲线上，需求量仍然维持在零以上。不仅仅是排行榜前10万的曲目每个月都至少会被下载一次，连那些在排行榜上排到20万、30万甚至是40万的曲目，都有人下载。不管Rhapsody如何迅速地扩张它的曲目库，那些曲目总能很快地找到听众，尽管每个月可能只有寥寥的几个人，从美国的某个角落点播了这些曲目。
This is the Long Tail. 这就是长尾。
You can find everything out there on the Long Tail. There’s the back catalog, older albums still fondly remembered by longtime fans or rediscovered by new ones. There are live tracks, B-sides, remixes, even (gasp) covers. There are niches by the thousands, genre within genre within genre: Imagine an entire Tower Records devoted to ’80s hair bands or ambient dub. There are foreign bands, once priced out of reach in the Import aisle, and obscure bands on even more obscure labels, many of which don’t have the distribution clout to get into Tower at all. 在这个长尾上，你能找到任何东西。这里有年代久远的旧唱片，忠实的老歌迷们仍然会满怀深情地想起它们，或者年轻的一代会重新发现它们。这里有现场录音，单曲，混编曲目，甚至是唱片的封套。这里有成千上万的细分再细分的小类别：想象一下，就好比一家Tower Records音像店，只出售80年代的hair bands （70年代兴起的重金属摇滚的一种）或是 ambient dub （参见这里）。这里还有那些在进口品货架上找不到的外国曲目，以及那些名不见经传的小乐队的演奏，其中的很大一部分根本就无从通过分销渠道进入现实当中的Tower Records音像店。
《普宁》（文摘）
Nov 30, 2008 我的静默时光
“可怜的丽莎！她当然有她爱好艺术的时刻，例如她会在五月的一个夜晚，站在一条肮脏的街道上借着街灯的光，着迷地欣赏—不，崇拜—一堵湿漉漉的黑墙上贴着的一张旧招贴画的五颜六色的残余，以及街灯旁边低垂的椴树半透明的绿叶，不过她是这样一种女人：把健康的美貌和歇斯底里的邋遢，诗意的激情同非常实际而庸俗的想法，坏透了的脾气和感伤的情绪，消沉的顺服和一种任意支配人的旺盛能力混合在一起。在滥用感情的结果下，在一连串事件的过程中，叙述也不会引起大家的兴趣，反正丽莎吞服了一大把安眠药片。她昏昏沉沉失去知觉的时，碰翻了一瓶开着盖的，她平时用来写诗的深红色墨水，鲜艳的细流流出了她的房门，让克丽丝和卢即使发现了，她那条命被救了回来。”
“我害怕您会为我的坦率直言而感到痛苦，我亲爱的丽莎”
“对一个敏感的人来说，看到另一个人处于一种困境，一向是件很痛苦的事。而我就是绝对处于一种困境。”
“我长得并不漂亮，我这个人枯燥无味，也么有天赋。我甚至也不阔绰。但是，丽丝，我把我所有的一切都献给您，直到我的最后一个白血球，直到我的最后一滴眼泪，样样都献给您。请相信我，这比任何一位天才所能提供给您的都要多，因为天才需要给自己保留许多，从而不能像我这样把他的全部都献给您。我也许不会获得幸福，但是我深信自己将尽一切力量使您获得幸福。”
Uhuh uhuh uhuh
Nov 29, 2008 我的静默时光
“So while I’m turning in my sheets，And once again I cannot sleep，Walk out the door and up the street
Look at the stars beneath my feet，Remember rights that I did wrong，So here I go…”
聽JAMES BLUNT的歌，看房間里塵埃在陽光中漂浮。這樣安靜的時刻，只有在周末。
晚上老是做夢，黑眼圈揮之不去。
陽臺上暖和的陽光貼在臉上，咪起眼睛想一下，在這個城市已經一年了。
納博科夫的《普寧》讀完，心裡滿是對那個可憐人的同情。生活讓人焦慮，心平氣和讀完一本書成了奢望。
煙抽多了，看到熒幕上有人吸煙就有些不安分。感恩節給父親發簡訊，他回覆說，信息收到，你媽叫你天冷要注意添衣。他心裡的感情總掩飾得很好。
[Magazine]：《时尚先生》12月号封面
Nov 28, 2008 我喜欢的杂志
來源：時尚先生
温特沃斯-米勒：我花了十年才能以表演为生
米勒听说他在中国的粉丝有1.35亿之多，几乎是十分之一的中国人。如果真有这么多,得罪他的粉丝可不是什么好注意。他认定粉丝们的尖叫多半是冲着迈克-斯科菲尔德来的，他否认自己和《越狱》里这个性感，聪明的人物有多少相似之处。
《The Long Tail（长尾）》Part 1
Nov 27, 2008 社会科学常识
In 1988, a British mountain climber named Joe Simpson wrote a book called Touching the Void, a harrowing account of near death in the Peruvian Andes. It got good reviews but, only a modest success, it was soon forgotten. Then, a decade later, a strange thing happened. Jon Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air, another book about a mountain-climbing tragedy, which became a publishing sensation. Suddenly Touching the Void started to sell again. 1988年，英国登山家Joe Simpson写了一本名叫《触摸巅峰》（译者：这是Touching the Void通用的中文翻译）的书。该书讲述了在秘鲁安第斯山脉发生的一次与死神擦肩而过的登山事故。这本书颇受好评，但不太畅销，并很快就被人们淡忘了。可十年后，有趣的事发生了。Jon Krakauer写的另一部描写登山悲剧的书《进入稀薄空气》成为了畅销书。突然间读者又开始对《触摸巅峰》产生了兴趣。
Random House rushed out a new edition to keep up with demand. Booksellers began to promote it next to their Into Thin Air displays, and sales rose further. A revised paperback edition, which came out in January, spent 14 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. That same month, IFC Films released a docudrama of the story to critical acclaim. Now Touching the Void outsells Into Thin Air more than two to one. 为满足读者要求，Random House出版社立刻再版该书。图书销售商把《触摸巅峰》放在《进入稀薄空气》旁边来促销。《触摸巅峰》越卖越火。来年一月，该书经过修订的平装版连续高居《纽约时报》畅销书排行榜14周之久。同月，IFC制片公司出品了以该书为背景的纪实片，倍受好评。到今天《触摸巅峰》的销售量超过《进入稀薄空气》一倍还多。
What happened? In short, Amazon.com recommendations. The online bookseller’s software noted patterns in buying behavior and suggested that readers who liked Into Thin Air would also like Touching the Void. People took the suggestion, agreed wholeheartedly, wrote rhapsodic reviews. More sales, more algorithm-fueled recommendations, and the positive feedback loop kicked in. 到底发生了什么呢？简单地说，是Amazon (亚马逊)的推荐造成了这个现象。网上书商Amazon的软件注意到不少喜欢《进入稀薄空气》的读者也喜欢《触摸巅峰》，就向购买《进入稀薄空气》的所有读者推荐《触摸巅峰》。读者接受了推荐，并且真的觉得这本书很好。一时间，网站的留言里好评如潮，销量因此进一步增加，这就带来了更多的好评，于是形成了一个正反馈。
Particularly notable is that when Krakauer’s book hit shelves, Simpson’s was nearly out of print. A few years ago, readers of Krakauer would never even have learned about Simpson’s book - and if they had, they wouldn’t have been able to find it. Amazon changed that. It created the Touching the Void phenomenon by combining infinite shelf space with real-time information about buying trends and public opinion. The result: rising demand for an obscure book. 值得注意的是，当Krakauer的书出版时，Simpson的书几乎已经绝版了。若是再早几年的话，《进入稀薄空气》的读者根本不会知道《触摸巅峰》的存在。即便知道，这本书也买不到了。但Amazon改变了这一切。通过把无限多的产品种类、实时的购买趋势和用户评价结合起来，Amazon 创造了一个把《触摸巅峰》由绝版书变成畅销书的奇迹。
This is not just a virtue of online booksellers; it is an example of an entirely new economic model for the media and entertainment industries, one that is just beginning to show its power. Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it in service after service, from DVDs at Netflix to music videos on Yahoo! Launch to songs in the iTunes Music Store and Rhapsody. People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what’s available at Blockbuster Video, Tower Records, and Barnes & Noble. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander further from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a lack of alternatives, and a hit-driven culture). 这一案例不仅仅适用于网上书商，它其实揭示了一个全新的适用于媒体和娱乐业的经济模型。这个模型正渐渐开始显示它的威力。比如Netflix的网上DVD租赁、Yahoo! LaunchCast 的MTV、iTunes的网上音乐商城，和Rhapsody。由于有几乎无穷多的产品可以选择，用户真正喜好的产品被挖掘出来。这使得传统商家如Blockbuster 录像租赁连锁店、Tower Records（CD零售连锁店）和Barnes & Noble （书店）望尘莫及。而这种前所未有的选择让用户流连忘返。当他们越来越远离传统的购买模式后，他们发现自己的欣赏口味竟是那么与众不同。或许以前的主流意识仅仅是被强大的市场营销、狭隘的产品选择以及亦步亦趋的流行文化所误导而已。
An analysis of the sales data and trends from these services and others like them shows that the emerging digital entertainment economy is going to be radically different from today’s mass market. If the 20th- century entertainment industry was about hits, the 21st will be equally about misses. 对上述公司的销售数据和趋势进行的分析显示，新兴的数字娱乐经济和今天的主流娱乐市场截然不同。如果说20世纪的娱乐业是以流行内容为主导的，那么在21世纪，那些非流行的内容将占据同样重要的位置。
For too long we’ve been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching - a market response to inefficient distribution. 为什么我们一直忍受着迎合大众口味的无聊透顶的夏季大片和粗制滥造的流行音乐呢？是因为市场经济的原因。大众化的口味实际上是不对称的供需关系的产物，是市场对产品分销能力不足的回应。
The main problem, if that’s the word, is that we live in the physical world and, until recently, most of our entertainment media did, too. But that world puts two dramatic limitations on our entertainment. 关键问题在于我们生活在一个物理的世界里，我们的娱乐产品直到不久以前，也是以实物为媒介的。这造成了两个重大的限制。
The first is the need to find local audiences. An average movie theater will not show a film unless it can attract at least 1,500 people over a two-week run; that’s essentially the rent for a screen. An average record store needs to sell at least two copies of a CD per year to make it worth carrying; that’s the rent for a half inch of shelf space. And so on for DVD rental shops, videogame stores, booksellers, and newsstands. 第一，娱乐业必须靠吸引当地消费者才能存在下去。一般来说，电影院放映一部电影，至少要在两周内吸引1500名以上的观众才能收回放映厅的租金。一个音乐制品店，平均每张CD至少在一年中要卖出两张，才能收回这张CD所占用的半英寸货架的租金。DVD出租、电子游戏零售、书报零售等都面临同样的问题。
In each case, retailers will carry only content that can generate sufficient demand to earn its keep. But each can pull only from a limited local population - perhaps a 10-mile radius for a typical movie theater, less than that for music and bookstores, and even less (just a mile or two) for video rental shops. It’s not enough for a great documentary to have a potential national audience of half a million; what matters is how many it has in the northern part of Rockville, Maryland, and among the mall shoppers of Walnut Creek, California. 在这些行业里，商家的进货必须要保证有足够的销量，才能抵消库存的费用。而另一方面，商家只能吸引有限的本地客户群。对于电影院，是周围10英里以内的人群；音乐制品店和书店的范围更小；而录像出租店可能只有一两英里的范围。一部优秀的记录片，在全国范围内可能有五十万观众会感兴趣，但这却没有任何意义；真正重要的是，在非常有限的地理范围内，如马里兰州洛克威尔市北部地区，或是加州Walnet Creek地区购物中心的人群中，有多少人会对此感兴趣。
There is plenty of great entertainment with potentially large, even rapturous, national audiences that cannot clear that bar. For instance, The Triplets of Belleville, a critically acclaimed film that was nominated for the best animated feature Oscar this year, opened on just six screens nationwide. An even more striking example is the plight of Bollywood in America. Each year, India’s film industry puts out more than 800 feature films. There are an estimated 1.7 million Indians in the US. Yet the top-rated (according to Amazon’s Internet Movie Database) Hindi-language film, Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, opened on just two screens, and it was one of only a handful of Indian films to get any US distribution at all. In the tyranny of physical space, an audience too thinly spread is the same as no audience at all. 很多出色的娱乐产品，在全国范围内会有大量热情的观众和听众，却难以跨越上述障碍。比如《疯狂约会美丽都（Triplets of Belleville）》这部广受好评，并获得奥斯卡最佳动画片提名的片子，只在全美6个影院上映过。一个更明显的例子是印度电影业在美国的遭遇。每年印度电影业有超过800部故事片出品；在美国有大约一百七十万印度裔；但最佳印度语影片《印度往事（Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India）》（依据Amazon互联网电影数据库的评价）只在两家影院上映过。在美国上映过的印度影片总共也只有屈指可数的几部。受空间因素的制约，零星分布的观众和没有观众几乎没有分别。
The other constraint of the physical world is physics itself. The radio spectrum can carry only so many stations, and a coaxial cable so many TV channels. And, of course, there are only 24 hours a day of programming. The curse of broadcast technologies is that they are profligate users of limited resources. The result is yet another instance of having to aggregate large audiences in one geographic area - another high bar, above which only a fraction of potential content rises. 另一个限制来自于物理定律本身。一定频谱范围内的无线电波只能搭载有限的广播频道；同轴电缆只能传输有限的电视频道。而一天又只有24小时播放节目的时间。广播和电视节目的传送要占用大量的有限资源。其结果呢，也是需要在一定的地域范围内有大量的听众和观众。这同样成为很多节目难以逾越的障碍。
The past century of entertainment has offered an easy solution to these constraints. Hits fill theaters, fly off shelves, and keep listeners and viewers from touching their dials and remotes. Nothing wrong with that; indeed, sociologists will tell you that hits are hardwired into human psychology, the combinatorial effect of conformity and word of mouth. And to be sure, a healthy share of hits earn their place: Great songs, movies, and books attract big, broad audiences.
娱乐业在20世纪对上述限制的解决方案很简单：让大片充斥影院，把畅销的音乐装满货架，给收音机听众和电视观众有限的选择，让他们甚至用不着换台。这样做其实没错。事实上，根据社会学家的理论，大片的产生有其心理学的根源－－是一种从众心理和口碑效应的结合。而确实，颇有一部分在大众中流行的音乐、电影、书籍是高质量的。
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