From Chris Anderson's latest post:
Here's my take on what the Long Tail is doing to pop culture. Rather than the scary fragmentation of our society into a nation of disconnected people doing their own thing, I think we're reforming into thousands of cultural tribes, connected less by geographic proximity and workplace chatter than by shared interests. Whether we think of it this way or not, each of us belongs to many different tribes simultaneously...
As a result, we can now treat culture not as one big blanket but as the superposition of many interwoven threads, each of which is individually addressable and and connects different groups of people simultaneously.
In short, we're seeing a shift from mass culture to massively parallel culture.
This is challenging enough for the various pop culture industries, where the investment, production and marketing machinery that's been built around the concept of "hits" will have to be re-tooled to serve a much broader range of niche audiences.
But it's an even tougher proposition in the zero-sum world of political advocacy, where there's typically one big winner, and everyone else in the tail--whether it's the # 2 candidate or the last write-in ballot--comes up empty. We may have "reformed into thousands of cultural tribes," but in politics it still takes 50% + 1 to win it all.
However, it would be a mistake for advocates to ignore the implications of the changing cultural landscape and continue to think only in terms of mass audiences, because our fragmented cultural identities--Anderson's "interwoven threads"--are a more accurate reflection of who we are than the "big blanket" Red State/Blue State divide would suggest, a point nicely illustrated by the University of Michigan maps that contrast the 2004 election results by state and by county.
You still need a "hit" to win politically, but you're going to get there through a shifting coalition of tribes making common cause. They won't identify with the "big blanket," be it the party, the candidate, or your organization, but with the "interwoven thread"--the issue of the day, the specific call to action--that temporarily connects them. And you'll have to re-assemble that coalition after every victory--or come up with a better one after every defeat--because it won't be built to last.