However I am not sure the long tail is in fact getting fatter, it might be a better to describe it as the tail is getting longer. As the marketplace gets bigger the tail get longer.

Just a thought.

What if you haven;t been profiled by Tech Crunch or some other popular blog? How much are your revenues?

Until I see proof, users mean nothing, monetization is all that counts, I can’t find any real academic study to show web 2.0 is a cash generator.

iLike is not a long-tail buisness. It’s a music website whose growth is being propelled by facebook. Since when was music not mainstream? Whilst iLike is “new” it’s not in a a true long-tail market. Much more ‘medium-tail’ with huge uptake thanks to it’s mainstream link.

SpaceTime has had a lot of downloads, but that’s becuase it has a techcruch preview and as readers, we’re all early adopting, download tarts. We love to try everything techcrunch throws at us. It is our interest in techcrunch and all around it that creates the download – not our desire (in this case) for 3D web experience. I bet less than 10% of the 100k downloads you mentioned got used for more than 30 minutes.

So you can’t use these two to draw your conclusion (appealing as it is). Thankfully the conclusion does still stands because antique pen and labrador lovers websites (which are long-tail) show the effect you describe. Just not as much, yet.

The reality of course is that people don’t convert at 10% they generally convert at 1% or less, so 1% of 1% of the customers is $5k USD per month.

Doesn’t Firefox use the search revenue model and they made around $15m for the year ? And of course most people that use these browsers indeed have ad blindness or a blocker in place.

Indeterminate… we don’t know. Most should be updates, rather than virgin machines, because few computers don’t have any Adobe Flash Player installed.

(The first use of a newly-installed Player sends a confirmation ping back, but that’s the only information we have. More than five million completed installations per day, every day.)

jd/adobe

“yes, the long tail is getting fatter…so is the short tail and everything else in between – all proportionate growth for the most part”

Flash completed downloads. How many of them are new and how many of them are upgardes from older versions?

The whole point is, one can not make 500,000 downloads look like a million by fudging. The number should be correct approximately.

(Apple’s download stats have traditionally been for initial download requests, rather than completed downloads, or successful installations.)

jd/adobe

But a registration to me is worthless. Just look at the numbers Mike seems to mention before about Digg and their 10 mil and his 10 accounts. I bet the new Netscape is a great example – how many registered for it when it started and how many are using it now.

Just like in 1995, you have agencies in many cases that want to make sure they hype the best numbers. I fought tooth and nail back then that hits were worthless, looks like the new fight is about registrations.

If we as journalists, bloggers, writers, whatever you want to call the group, push these BS numbers, then we are continuing the madness. InteractionMetrics are what matter.

Outright deception aside, the concept of a “user” is not well-defined. SpaceTime might have recieved 100,000 “downloads” in a matter of weeks, but how many of them are actually using the service on a regular basis post-download?

“An average SpaceTime user might return $5 per month to the company by clicking on Google ads or surfing eBay; $500,000 per month @ 100,000 users.”

Is this for real? Is this the type of unsophisticated thinking that drives investment in Web 2.0 companies? I think it’s hard to argue that every single “download” has resulted in an active user and I seriously doubt that of the users who are active, $5/month monetization has been achieved. If Facebook, for instance, was acheiving that type of monetization, with 20+ million claimed active users, they’d be making $100 million each MONTH(actual ANNUAL revenues are reported to be in the $100 – $150 million range – a big difference). Clearly Facebook and SpaceTime can’t be compared on an apples to apples basis, but I’d argue that Facebook has the potential to be a better platform for monetization so I doubt that SpaceTime’s average active user is generating anywhere near $5/month for the company.

Needless to say, I think many of the numbers floating around out there are exaggerated by startups hoping to get bought out or raise big VC rounds, and even of the startups that do have a decent audience, it’s not clear with most of them that the audience can successfully be leveraged to build a viable business. If you have a service with 2 million users but your revenues are less than a successful small business, the question has to be asked: why the hype and investment? I’d rather invest in a company honest about having a smaller active user base but solid monetization than a company who can’t make money that pumps out numbers that don’t stand up to scrutiny.