Upon first blush, Chris Anderson seems to daily, professionally, livelihood-depending-on-it contradict himself. As editor-in-chief of the slick Condé Nast magazine Wired, which boasts a paid circulation of over 650,000, Anderson spends his off-hours talking about the emergence, importance, power, victory of the niche class. But it’s Anderson’s helm at this very non-niche company that contributes so hugely to his understanding of the same, pulled together in his breakaway bestseller The Long Tail.

Anderson’s keen understanding of the various markets that culture serves is all the more impressive once he maps out the fragmentation of each individual market. They all inexorably point toward the same conclusion—the “one size fits ‘me’ culture.” The power of one is the next big thing.

Exhibit A: Music
The bestselling album of all time is boy-band ‘N Sync’s 2nd album, released March 21, 2000. This particular album sold one million copies in the first day, 2.4 million in the first week, 10 million at the end of the first year. It is also the last bestselling album. Anderson explains.

The music industry has not declined—it’s not the death of the music industry—not in weight, relevance, visibility. The hit music industry, however, is a different story, says Anderson. New technologies, like the iPod in flashing-lights particular, has altered the supply-and-demand landscape. There’s more supply. There’s more demand. But less concentrated around just a few hits. There is less desire for the “one,” but there are more “one’s.” Consequently, there are a lot more “one’s.” The bands that never had a chance under the old system—the hits-only system—have a presence in the new system.

Exhibit B: Television
It used to be so simple. Now there’s cable, digital cable, high-capacity digital cable. Et cetera. With more choice, the average market share is on a downward slope. There is a splintering of audience. There’s a new culture of TV audience. There are niches.

In the recent past niches were—kinda, sorta—attended to by cable channels. Now, by YouTube. And to Anderson’s point, no doubt there’s an easy and efficient way to niche the niche now. Perhaps you’ll read about it in Wired.

The Shape of Things
The 20th century was many things. If you’re an editor of all-things-culture, it was one giant bell curve. Objective: capture the markets that fall in the middle. Result: Success. This means companies were able to reach the greatest concentration of people with the least amount of legwork. Anderson filters the point: the downfall—one of the downfalls?—of the bell curve is that the traditional channels ran out of room.

Then what?

The Shape of Things Now
There is endless shelf space on the supermarket that is the Internet. The lesson, Anderson points out, is that if there isn’t an end to something, you will discover what people really want. To wit: Vitamin Water. Whole Foods. Starbucks. The up-and-coming Dagoba Chocolate (organic, by the way).

Case Study #1: Zappos
It’s an unsophisticated web site. First and second impressions: Overwhelming. Third, fourth: There are 750,000 kinds of shoes offered. The immediate curiosity is that 750,000 different kinds of shoes exist in the first place. But the lesson is that if as a business you provide a lot of options—more than seems even necessary, perhaps—you’ll discover a new niche, a new audience, a new market, a new opportunity.

These opportunities once were relied upon by the bigger companies. What once was theirs is now in question. They compete now by opening their wallets and purchasing the niche companies.

Case Study #2: Anheuser Busch
Anheuser Busch created a new division called—get ready—Long Tail Libations. This division includes microbrews, craft beers, regional beers. The latest is Redbridge—a gluten-free non-allergenic beer. Anderson jokes that the first question might be: “What does that taste like?” But the second question is the one that counts: “Who drinks that?”

The answers to both might surprise you. And that’s Anderson’s thesis.

The Tipping Point
What, all of a sudden, was the tipping point? There was a shift in our culture, a democratization of taste. Google perhaps led the way. Now there are blogs of all flavors and these are the current ringleaders of the niche markets. “There are 70 million blogs with more traffic than any of the web sites of companies gathered here [at Radio City Music Hall] combined,” Anderson says. And more than likely, these bloggers blog for free. How can companies possibly compete? How can companies remain competitive…while the market shifts bit by bit, not so slowly but still remarkably to the narrow end of the long tail?

Anderson’s recommendations might sound simple, but they’re not.

Forget Being A Portal
Anderson shares with us Wired.com’s traffic details. Though just barely, the majority of users visit a page on the site from an external web site. This is not the ideal scenario. The less ideal scenario is the realization of what comes in last place, which is internal navigation. This underscrores Anderson’s claim—niche viewers arrive at the site from some other source. They don’t look to Wired.com for all of their information—they found it somewhere else, and visit the site just to learn about it. Then they leave.

Tear Down Those Walls
Anderson insists that free and open information will serve companies best and position them most positively for the future. Barriers to entry and barriers to participation ignore the broader conversation. “Play the web properly” and reap the benefits.

Loosen the Rein on Content
It goes without saying—make your content available, when it’s available, and make it available in different ways. For example, when you have a new product or a new development within your company, use RSS, create podcasts, integrate it into your web site immediately. Users arrive at information now from all directions and methods. The old methods are no longer tried and true. Get your information out there.

What’s Old Is New Again
On Wired.com, 40% of its traffic is generated by stories from its archives. The math tells the business sense—the longer content is available on the Internet, the more time it’s able to generate incoming links, which means that it is more visible in Google search results. This costs Wired nothing, and allows the magazine to discern an old story’s value through monitoring the traffic to it. Lesson: Mine your archives to plot your future.

Take Chances
Taking a risk can take off in ways a company might not expect. Anderson presents the case of Chevy Tahoo. In an attempt to differentiate the SUV and brand and engage with potential customers, the company launched an interactive marketing campaign in which consumers could create the ad’s tagline. This campaign was launched as oil prices really started to raise and in a climate of consumers’ increasing eco-sensitivity. So what happened? Consumers took the opportunity to note the SUV’s gas-guzzling features and publicized these ads all over. No doubt Chevy executives were embarrassed at such a public rebuke. But instead of pulling the ads, they realized the result—it looked like Chevy invited the contradiction, that Chevy was initiating a conversation about the contradiction of their product with the current political and environmental climate. At the end of the day, Anderson summarizes, Chevy became authentic in a way that traditional advertising couldn’t have done…”and made it [Chevy] relevant to the Google generation.”

The Future
Anderson brings his presentation to a close by presenting Microsoft’s recent success with a marketing tool that neither comes from inside its walls nor even from its employees. Microsoft pays 4,000 bloggers to blog on their behalf. This is the point, and this is crucial. The bloggers are interacting with the customers—for all intents and purposes, Microsoft is completely out of the picture. The idea is that customers can more easily relate to the bloggers who are passionate about a certain Microsoft product than they can to someone who they know works for Microsoft and is therefore paid by Microsoft to know and endorse Microsoft, but maybe not the particular product the customer has a question about or an issue with. The Internet is the great enabler here—the customers don’t know the bloggers are being paid—in a way, employed—by Microsoft because they in no way “look” or seem to be.

It seems like a word-of-mouth relationship, and that’s because it is. This is the future of marketing—this is the future of how people find out about, relate to, come to identify with the products and services of every company. Every customer has a megaphone and is talking about you. It’s your opportunity and responsibility to know what they’re saying.