A View From Under the Long Tail

An anonymous reader writes "Here's a funny article by James Boyle in the Financial Times on what it really feels like to be part of the long tail economy." From the article: "Where Amazon's normal customer service seems to be run by suspiciously cheerful MBAs from Stanford, who break off from counting their stock options to write apologies and deliver refunds, 'Amazon Advantage', the ironically named system for selling wares, is clearly based on the last days of the Soviet system. The problem with their representatives is not that their native language is not English, it is that their native planet is not Earth."

Wow

[OverlordQ]

The article, which was written by a guy, whose name is James, who shares the first name of a President, who helped create the constituion, which was written a long time ago, which is quite as old as when Communism was envisioned, which we can blame the Greeks for, which make great olive oil, which comes in extra virgin, which covers the majority of the slashdot crowd. . . .

Oh wait, what was I talking about again?

A Tail of Too Shities!

[dotslashdot]

It sounds like a Tail of Too Shities!

Re:The network effect makes competition DIFFICULT

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon... wait, damnit!

Re:Economics ... setting the record straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Blah blah blah gold standard blah blah

Beware the man of one book.

Re:The network effect makes competition DIFFICULT

[ZippyKitty]

The road transport system = the new ebay. People could club together to sell things and you could call them -- Oh I don't know -- Markets or Shops....

Yes but this caters to a very niche market - those who leave the house to buy things :) .

ZK

Re:The network effect makes competition DIFFICULT

[blighter]

nobody's ever given up because something was difficult

Nonsense. I give up on things because they're difficult all the time!

Re:The network effect makes competition DIFFICULT

[Frizzle Fry]

nobody's ever given up because something was difficult.
This statement sounded suspicious to me, so I tried to think up a counter-example, but after twenty minutes I quit because it was too hard. I guess you were right!