of popularity make them inappropriate for traditional television – are easily accessible to a wide range of viewers. Contemporary literature The intersection of viral marketing, online communities and new technologies that operate within the long tail of consumers and business is described in the novel by William Gibson, Pattern Recognition. Military applications and security In military thinking, John Robb applies the long tail to the developments in insurgency and terrorist movements, showing how technology and networking allows the long tail of disgruntled groups and criminals to take on the nation state and have a chance to win. Criticisms A 2008 study by Anita Elberse, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, calls the long tail theory into question, citing sales data which shows that the Web magnifies the importance of blockbuster hits. On his blog, Chris Anderson responded to the study, praising Elberse and the academic rigor with which she explores the issue but drawing a distinction between their respective interpretations of where the "head" and "tail" begin. Elberse defined head and tail using percentages, while Anderson uses absolute numbers. Similar results were published by Serguei Netessine and Tom F. Tan, who suggest that head and tail should be defined by percentages rather than absolute numbers. Also in 2008, a sales analysis of an unnamed UK digital music service by economist Will Page and high-tech entrepreneur Andrew Bud found that sales exhibited a log-normal distribution rather than a power law; they reported that 80% of the music tracks available sold no copies at all over a one-year period. Anderson responded by stating that the study's findings are difficult to assess without access to its data. See also Black swan theory Kolmogorov's zero–one law, also known as tail event. Mass customization Micropublishing Swarm intelligence Notes References Footnotes Sources The Long Tail a computer model by Fiona Maclachlan, The Wolfram Demonstrations Project External links Economics curves Tails of probability distributions Statistical laws