Long Tail and attention crisis in Enterprise Learning

ArticleDirectory

• Impact on learning organizations and enterprise training organizations:

Author: rockmaple@gmail.com

Tony Karrer: http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/02/corporate-learning-long-tail-and.html

Content Overview:

If you are not familiar with the concept of "long tail", refer to the definition provided by Wikipedia, or take a look at the abstract on Anderson's long tail of getshortacts. The basic idea can be illustrated in the following example: Amazon online bookstores sell a large number of books that are not even visible in traditional bookstores. When the cost of commodity circulation, storage, and production is reduced to a certain extent, selling those products that are relatively unpopular becomes possible. The long tail market tends to produce a large number of products with a growing variety, while only a small part of the products are at the top. This often happens. content providers such as Yahoo or CNN compete with a large number of personal blogs, while TV stations compete with websites such as yutube.

Typical long tail

Since the time each person uses to process information is the same, they naturally need to allocate time to more and more extensive fields, that is, the so-called Attention Economy, in the Attention Economy, scarce resources are not distribution channels or information, but attention. Everyone has limited time and can only focus on important things. This is similar to switching sales in a long tail chart to attention.

Impact on learning organizations and enterprise training organizations:

• Enterprise Training organizations are more like content producers and distributors;
• Knowledge workers face the increasing amount of information resources, and enterprise learning is only a small part;
• In terms of information usage, money cost is no longer a major consideration, and time cost is more important. For example, we chose our favorite search engine because we thought it could help us obtain the most valuable information in the shortest time;
• Information sources are still growing explosively. As traditional content publishers, enterprise training organizations can only meet a small part of their needs;
• If we cannot attract our attention, we will be gradually marginalized. Getting attention is more important than before, and we need more efforts than before. Enterprise Learning is in a crisis of attention;
• Enterprise Learning organizations are looking for ways to reduce costs and expand the market-invest in long tails. They need e-learning to reduce the cost of content delivery; If enterprise learning organizations really need to influence the long tail, they must face eLearning 2.0;