Falling off the end of the Long Tail

Readers of this blog will know that my latest geeky pursuit is flying electric-powered radio-control model airplanes with the kids (okay, the kids are mostly cover). This means that I've been learning about the hobby and, like all hobbies, it's a rabbit hole. You can not only go as deep as you want, but once you scratch the surface it's all deep. Most of these interests are not only poorly served by traditional media, they're not even well served by web media. Two steps down the learning curve and you're in the world of discussion groups and emails, the dark matter of the web. You've fallen off the end of the Long Tail.

Let me give you an example.

The good thing about electric planes is that they're quiet and they simply go when you turn them on--no loud gas engines with fiddly carburetors and fuel mess. But the bad thing about electrics is that charging and discharging batteries is still a black art. Flying the planes themselves is easy compared to the electrochemical Olympics of proper battery "conditioning".

You'd think in this day of laptops, cellphones and iPods that recharging batteries would be a solved problem. But it's not. Unlike your typical computer-controlled gadget, which typically has lithium-ion batteries with dedicated battery-management circuitry and a custom charger, radio-controlled planes have individual cells strung together in any number of configurations and crudely wrapped in plastic.

Nearly every battery pack configuration is different. I'm looking at two right now. One is a NiMH pack of 5 cells, rated at 7.2v and 1000 milliamps. The other is a NiCad pack of six cells rated at 9.6v and 1,800 milliamps. And there are at least 16 other configurations in the bag at my feet. Each came with its own trickle charger with its own custom output voltage and amperage and recommended charge time. They fill another bag. There are four different kind of plugs, all incompatible with each other. The only way to keep these kind of batteries delivering their full power is to completely discharge them and then recharge them with exactly the right juice for exactly the right length of time, to avoid battery "memory" and overheating.

Now consider what it takes to prepare for a day of flying. Let's say you want to take four planes out tomorrow with two fully-charged packs each. That's eight batteries or at least four different configurations that need to be properly discharged and recharged. Done by hand, this means dragging out a few planes and sitting there for an hour running the motors with each battery until you're sure it's discharged, then plugging each one into its appropriate charger (you did remember which goes with which, didn't you?) and marking the times to unplug each for its different requirement. 

Oh, and by the way, you need to do it at least five hours before you go to bed, because you can't let them go overnight for fear of overcharging (to say nothing of the occasional battery that overheats and melts down in a puddle of plastic and a puff of smoke). It's a day's work and if you get anything wrong you've probably killed an expensive battery if you haven't burned down your house.

Surely there's some kind of fancy charger that can automate all of this? Well, maybe. But good luck in finding it. Dozens of computer-controlled "peak", "pulse" and conditioning chargers, ranging from $50 to more than $200 are available from specialist retailers (Amazon won't save you now), and each one looks like the most godawful piece of industrial lab bench equipment you can imagine (see above). Their instruction manuals can run scores of pages and woe to the user that doesn't read them cover to cover and tries to just, you know, plug in a battery and press "Start".

What's a regular person to do? I've got no idea. I was having coffee with an acquaintance at the airport this morning and mentioned this problem as an example of how easily one finds oneself in the Long Tail and how quickly one falls off the edge of commercial media and into the uncharted territory of peer support. The moment I started talking about cell configurations, his eyes lit up. Turns out that he flies R/C planes, too and he'd had exactly the same problem. "And then I couldn't even find any blogs so I ended up on bulletin boards!" I complained. He nodded sympathetically: "RCGroups". Yes, him too. And there, just before we dashed off to our gates, two otherwise mainstream professional guys had a Long Tail moment.  

There are countless niches like this, each one an opportunity for someone to build a micro-business or just a resource to satisfy a demand, bringing powerful social media tools such as wikis and blogging to specialist communities that already exist in less easy-to-navigate form. It's going to be fascinating to watch this rich world of niche culture emerge around us, simply because it's what we want and need and now there's nothing to stop us from doing it ourselves.

Comments

[Jake Anderson]

Have you considered the implications of a short tail? I bet you didn't think of that. Some call it a nubbin, others an extra long spine.

[Neil Cauldwell]

It sounds like you need to take the initiative for all the RC air plane enthusiasts out there. Visit the revamped Ning.com, build an RCGroups social network, complete with blog, discussion forum, and image/video/audio uploads. You could even build in a link to a PBwiki for the RCGroups. And all of this is free of course.

[goblin]

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[Fred Vogelstein]

And when we get the battery issue solved, it will be on to mounting little cameras/camcorders on the belly of these things. Imagine a world where everyone can turn still and video cameras via RC planes on their neighbors, celebrities, competitors and enemies at will. Sure beats the traffic report - and Google Earth, for that matter.

[Tom Asacker]

Great post Chris! The question of satisfying the short nub becomes one of investment vs. return. I recently spoke with a very passionate pediatric physician who has some incredibly novel ideas for improving the lives of infants suffering from various pulmonary conditions (note: I once owned a fast growth medical device company). The problem she has in providing such help is simple: the market is too small for a large manufacturer to be interested and the initial investment, as well as the ongoing costs required (e.g. liability insurance), are too expensive for her to afford. I’m pretty sure that the problem in your niche is similar.

[John Fisher]

Interesting. Scale up your post and the EV guys ( thats electric vehicle for DIYers ) have the same problems.
I have been reading the well-traveled EV list and more than half the talk is about batteries and battery management.
Its common to read statements like, "everybody kills their first pack of batteries..." - thats a $2000 pack he's talking about.
The new Li-ions like A123 and Altnano are much lighter for their Wh ratings, but hold on to your Benjamins - a car's worth is $12000 or more.

There are a couple of sophisticated specialty makers of chargers and controllers ( these are $1200 items too ) but no one makes a modular kit of batteries, controller and charger. Obviously Honda and Toyota can make such a thing for their hybrids, but their black boxes are probably not re-usable. Trouble is, the market for EV conversion kits is probably in the 50's annually, yet if there were a good kit, the market might grow.

Anybody want to work on a DARPA grant application?

John Fisher

[Anne Knight]

I offer mobileread.com as a model of what you are talking about. I have a Sony Reader - released last October. By the time I got mine for Christmas, the mobileread boys were in the air - creating software, workarounds, accessories, etc. It's a wonderful place for geeks and nongeeks can communicate, and it also functions as a de facto focus group for Sony.

[Sonia Kalfon]

Hi Chris
Nice post! I thought I would jump in as I recently joined Webjam, a London-based startup whose ambition is precisely to offer a social media toolkit to niche interest groups, passionate hobbyists or local communities. We are big fans of the long tail and we are working hard to make it grow :) . If you want to try and create your “rabbit hole” on www.webjam.com I would be very interested in your feedback, as well as fellow readers’.

A webjam is a webpage that the owner can customize and share, without a need for html knowledge, by selecting from a catalogue of module and styles. Applied to your hobby, it would enable you to aggregate for example a blog, a forum, some RSS feeds, some tag-based Flickr photos and a weather module. You could manage a community of electric planes fans and make some modules only visible to the members. Finally you could invite some members to be co-publishers of your webjam.

Leveraging on some learnings from your book, we like to “give users the keys to the factory”. By default every webjam, module or style can be replicated, so if you feel a bit uninspired or if you really like what someone else has done, you can just replicate it on your own webjam.

At the moment we have a nice example of niche interest group featured on our homepage: Guidejam, www.webjam.com/guidejam/ , a gathering of Blue Badge guides in London. How niche is that?!

Of course we are just at the beginning, and we are still developing and adjusting our product. Easier customization and better connection of supply and demand are next on the list ;)

Cheers
Sonia,
Product Marketing Director at Webjam Ltd

[Brian Laks]

Interesting article... Reminds me of a Business 2.0 column on "meganiches". The long tail is alive and well, and I think were seeing a lot of the traditionally "short tail" companies experiment with tactics to give them length.

[Kyle McClain]

I keep marine reef aquariums and we have similar issues when it comes to buying off the shelf technology. However the community of marine aquarists is probably quite a bit larger than the one surrounding model RC planes. That being said I have seen a lot commercial offerings arise out of hobbyists tinkering with equipment and sharing knowledge. It's my belief that the internet shot the hobby forward 25, 30 or maybe even 50 years. We are at a point now where many people are successfully tank raising species of fish that 10 years ago nobody even knew how to get them to breed.

[steve]

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