David told me that his friends in the movie business really don't like the long tail. They hate it, in fact. They hate that they can't manufacture a hit movie anymore with awesome marketing. They hate it that Steve Jobs, with Pixar, is kicking their behinds by making movies that people talk about in the word-of-mouth networks.
I see it in my aggregator. The Incredibles is STILL being talked about on blogs. Many of those blogs only have 10 to 100 readers. Maybe even less. But, that's where the profitability comes from. Every blogger that talks about a movie makes that movie more profitable.
I told David that blogs are only the tip of the iceberg. Blogs are only the part of the word-of-mouth networks that we can see. So, for every blog that talks about something, there are probably 100,000 conversations that we can't see. Blogs just give us a fuzzy picture of what really is being discussed person-to-person in IM, email, on the phone, or over turkey dinner tomorrow at Thanksgiving.
This actually explains a lot about the legal approach that they've taken to p2p. Instead of creating their own electronic markets (with price points that work), they have been trying to shut down the entire space - with intimidation suits and new law. What they want is complete control of the information channel, and they are in complete denial about the fact that it's impossible.
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