3 ms·

That's the nature about the long tail of things: not everything you see will be personally appealing to you. In fact, only a tiny sliver of all possible things

by iamwil 13y ago

That's the nature about the long tail of things: not everything you see will be personally appealing to you. In fact, only a tiny sliver of all possible things will be appealing to you. The mistake that many people make (not necessarily you), is when they ask for examples of appealing or useful 3D printing, and if your example doesn't appeal to them, then they write off the entire long tail of things to 3D print. It's much like you asking your friends what movies they like on Netflix, and the friends answer "Home Alone" and "Elf". Since you don't like those movies, you can't imagine there being any other movie on Netflix you'd like, and write off all movies. 3D printing for the masses is so new that no one's seen much of the long tail, and there are things to be printed that are not yet explored.

anigbrowl 13y ago
It's much like you asking your friends what movies they like on Netflix, and the friends answer "Home Alone" and "Elf". Since you don't like those movies, you can't imagine there being any other movie on Netflix you'd like, and write off all movies. That doesn't really make sense. It's more like the early days of Netflix streaming where people were reluctant to sign up because the selection of movies on there was actually terrible. I didn't touch it for a couple of years despite having access through a Netflix membership, because I couldn't find anything on there I wanted to watch. The fact is that right now most examples of 3d printing are not that great. People at Maker Faire print out giant dodecahedral hats - admittedly to showcare the alrge print area rather than their taste in headware - or the occasional hard-to-find part. But most of the lower-end printers still produce output that looks highly pixelated, and the properties of the plastic used mean that many items have to be printed with additional structural support. What people see at the moment is like an inkjet printer (good) that can only produce output in Comic Sans (bad) and at low resolution (worse). The exciting thing about patent expiration is getting around some of the resolution problems. People expect plastic to be smooth, not to look like miniature lego. Ideally you want to be able to print stuff of similar quality to a model aircraft kit. Right now it's OK for large, somewhat clunky items.
- iamwil 13y ago
  What I'm pointing out is the mistake people make extrapolating from very few data points about the space of possibilities now and in the near future in a long tail of possibilities for 3D printing. Per your example, It may very well be that nothing in the long tail of things to make with a 3D printer will appeal to you right now, and not for a long time. You may very well be a late adopter. But that doesn't mean that the entire space is useless, and of all the possibilities of things to 3D print, none of them will be useful or appealing to you personally. However, it will SEEM that way to you, since, by nature of a long tail, only a sliver of it appeals to you. Until that sliver gets discovered, by yourself or someone with more imagination, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that nothing will be appealing, given the samples you've seen so far.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    You're not understanding me, or the issue. If the long tail is only a sliver, then people won't buy the actual printer, they'll purchase what they require from a 3d printing supplier that can deliver decent quality. there's no long tail for dot-matrix (impact) printers, for example; people who needed one got one, but most people rightly sat it out until better products were available.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]

by iamwil 13y ago

anigbrowl 13y ago

It's much like you asking your friends what movies they like on Netflix, and the friends answer "Home Alone" and "Elf". Since you don't like those movies, you can't imagine there being any other movie on Netflix you'd like, and write off all movies. That doesn't really make sense. It's more like the early days of Netflix streaming where people were reluctant to sign up because the selection of movies on there was actually terrible. I didn't touch it for a couple of years despite having access through a Netflix membership, because I couldn't find anything on there I wanted to watch. The fact is that right now most examples of 3d printing are not that great. People at Maker Faire print out giant dodecahedral hats - admittedly to showcare the alrge print area rather than their taste in headware - or the occasional hard-to-find part. But most of the lower-end printers still produce output that looks highly pixelated, and the properties of the plastic used mean that many items have to be printed with additional structural support. What people see at the moment is like an inkjet printer (good) that can only produce output in Comic Sans (bad) and at low resolution (worse). The exciting thing about patent expiration is getting around some of the resolution problems. People expect plastic to be smooth, not to look like miniature lego. Ideally you want to be able to print stuff of similar quality to a model aircraft kit. Right now it's OK for large, somewhat clunky items.

iamwil 13y ago
What I'm pointing out is the mistake people make extrapolating from very few data points about the space of possibilities now and in the near future in a long tail of possibilities for 3D printing. Per your example, It may very well be that nothing in the long tail of things to make with a 3D printer will appeal to you right now, and not for a long time. You may very well be a late adopter. But that doesn't mean that the entire space is useless, and of all the possibilities of things to 3D print, none of them will be useful or appealing to you personally. However, it will SEEM that way to you, since, by nature of a long tail, only a sliver of it appeals to you. Until that sliver gets discovered, by yourself or someone with more imagination, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that nothing will be appealing, given the samples you've seen so far.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  You're not understanding me, or the issue. If the long tail is only a sliver, then people won't buy the actual printer, they'll purchase what they require from a 3d printing supplier that can deliver decent quality. there's no long tail for dot-matrix (impact) printers, for example; people who needed one got one, but most people rightly sat it out until better products were available.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]