Comments on Minchul Song's project description

Minchul discusses ideas for products that will occupy the Long Tail of the distribution curve. The Long Tail is a theory about the future of business and product design that was popularized by Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired Magazinem who writes,

"The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare."


see Chris Anderson's blog, The Long Tail.


While I am in strong agreement that the Long Tail is a useful model for thinking about the future of product design, I am not sure how Minchul's thesis proposal, to develop a new kind of information display, is an example of a product idea which would occupy the Long Tail. How would this new display serve a niche market? I need to know a lot more about what is being planned before I can state with confidence that this product exemplifies the principles Long Tail marketing.