[Ankesh]

In the last decade, two somewhat similar but different thoughts have emerged.

1. Wisdom of the Crowd. How crowds make better decisions than a single person.

2. The Long Tail. How different people want different and very uncommon options. Best example: 60% of books sold by amazon.com are unknown hidden books that aren't carried in the retail brick and mortar book stores at all.

Internet is the only medium that allows efficient use of the idea behind the "wisdom of the crowd" and the "long tail" together.

Provide a lot of options to people (or let the people themselves create the options). And let them make a decision as to what they want and what is hot.

And web 2.0 is the term coined to describe that idea.

Is the idea itself new? Not at all. Just look at Dell.