Interactivity + Long Tail + customization = $$$$$

Interactivity is very broad and a term that would have a countless definitions. Spiro Kiousis’ article “Interactivity: a concept explication” stated that as the World Wide Web emerged and dramatically increased as a new communication medium so has its interactivity.
One concept that was given by Kiousis was that Chaffee’s (1991) framework in which we suggest interactivity to be “both a media and psychological factor that varies across communication, technology, communication context, and people’s perception.”
Tim Berner-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, defined a concept using interactivity as to be able to make a comment on somebody's paper, to put a yellow sticky on it and say, "This is really important," with a link to why it is.
Berner-lee, inventor of the World Wide Web felt that the word “interactivity” is used very loosely. His concept is taking real-time audio and video and integrating it with the web so you can create a meeting document and talk to people in it.
As far as defining interactivity, Sally McMillan broke it down into six components; (1) the direction of communication, (2) time flexibility, (3) sense of place, (4) level of control, (5) responsiveness, and (6) perceived purpose of communication.
Berners-Lee doesn’t even use the term “interactivity,” he uses "intercreativity." He means, building things together, which is more than filling out a form and hitting submit.
“Imagine, for example, a heap of objects--a compass, a magnet, and some iron filings. You come across them in a 3-D virtual world, and you can use them to learn something about magnetic fields. Suppose you can take these magnets and their properties to another virtual world and with them create a little tower of magnets and discuss it with your friends. Suppose you can build with other people within the virtual space. That will be much more satisfying and more productive than any of the current forms of interactivity. Yet that sort of thing will also need a lot of engineering; you will have to roll in a lot of things.”
I look at it as “building together, being creative together.” INTER – ACTIVE, which is what I believe worked for Berners-Lee in his partnership with CERN.
The role of Interactivity plays a very important part as far as having adhesiveness in groups, companies, firms, establishments, etc. Using this model allows strong collaboration for such networks like Amazon and eBay, so that companies can provide services to them and vice-versa and to customers.
I believe the “Long Tail” has viable expectations for future business models. If businesses use this model they can cater to their audiences and like the entertainment industries and provide a catalogue of information about products.
In the book “The World Is Flat,” Thomas Freidman befriended the owner of Starbucks, Howard Schultz. Schultz discusses how Starbucks allowed him to use the model, but in the process allowed customer interactivity by allowing them to customize what they wanted and make their own preference, self service.
Starbucks allowed consumers to create a catalogue. In “The Long Trail” there was a statement that “many of our assumptions about popular brands and taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching – a market response to inefficient distribution.” Starbucks went against that trend and became successful by it. When companies don’t follow the model and implement the plan that Starbucks has done, they impose a limit to its customers and risk bad business. Unlimited selection is the goal, which will reveal customer wants and what business do to since customization and expression can create unlimited selection and are very important factors in new media and long tail business models.
The Long Tail also allows customer catering depending on the demographic that they fit in, which is an important part since some customers want specific items, which is how radio and television incorporate in their medium. Each is compromised of channels for people who fit a certain criteria to locate.
Another reason for the Long Tails viability is the collaboration between these companies such as iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube. It is through interactivity that consumers can find products or items that where “misses” that they thought they would never see, that they can as well as purchase them. “And because there are so many of them, that money can add up quickly to a huge new market.” “Misses” find an audience, even if it’s just a few people a month, somewhere in the country, which they call The Long Trail as well as following rule #1 which is “make everything available.”
The question I propose is do companies such as Rhapsody boost the interest in the entertainment industries lost titles that no one carries such as Blockbuster Video?
Can they bring a dead title from the grave and give it enough appeal to where people will recognize it and put as much interest into it as they do the current released hits. “The biggest sales are in the smallest items.”