what role does mainstream have in a onlinecommunity ?

On July 16th, 2008 Henriette Weber wrote:

answer: mainstream doesn't exist in a community - I would even argue that there is no mainstream anymore.

Anyways I have been researching a bit during the last couple of days, due to my work with Koblo.com -and the key that I found was in good'old Chris Andersons book "the long tail" where he basically argues the winning situation the niche's has over mainstream - and he even uses music communities as an example ! -

So the argument is battled between the mainstream hitlist vs. recommendation algorithms in a community.

Somehow as the mainstream disappears, the hitlists becomes irrelevant. Or to put it more clearly - I don't care about a pop chart hitlists if I am into rock'n'roll. Or maybe I do, but I will always get more relevant data if I get a rock'n'roll hitlist..

So RELEVANCY algorithms are key for music communities - as relevancy algorithms are key on amazon.com for books.

so in general hitlists are becoming obsolete - unless they are relevant and "up close" to the users.

it's kindoff the same idea that is spreading like a wildfire through the advertisement industry - to make ads seem like "relevant information" to the users so they wont notise that it's an ad...

smart thinking =)

oh - this is crossposted on the koblo blog

[communities, music, relevancy, thelongtail, hitlists, recommendation] [3 comments]