Seth Godin has posted a curious entry called “Categories and the short head”. Curious because as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t seem to really say anything. From his post (Link):

The reason you should care about all this: you are in a category too. So is your organization.

And you have a lot of influence over what category you’re going to be placed in.

For example, there are a lot of software products (fireclick, hitbox, etc.) that measure analytics. Unfortunately for these guys, in the very same category is Google analytics, which is free. Google is now the official short head of analytics, and as long as you are in the same category as they are, you’re in trouble.

Okay. That seems pretty self-evident. The minute anyone shows up offering a product or service for free, the rest of the people in that category are screwed. Got it. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the truth in that. (Note: This is where I expect Seth Godin to pull a Sam Kinison and cut through with some personal insight ala the “Back To School” lecture).

No such luck.

Earlier today someone posted this on the Core77 forum (Link):

Will the availability of inexpensive and talented designers in Asia lead to the end of design work here in the US? I have nothing against Asia or asians, but I am scared. I don’t want to lose my job or ability to make a living. What is the best way to deal with it, and how should designers in the US be reacting?

And my response:

Answer is simple afaic: be worth the money you charge in excess of what your competition charges.

In other words, get out of that particular category. Provide some additional service or product or insight that puts you in a specialized niche which justifies the cost of hiring you instead of hiring the designer in Asia working at a fraction of your rate.

Okay. So maybe a few people need to be reminded. Then again, I’d venture … hope … that the people reading his blog don’t need this sort of handholding.

But that’s not really the thing here. After reading Godin’s post I decided to go and have a look at Chris Anderson’s Long Tail blog. In particular, I recalled an earlier entry that discussed “the short head” and simply wanted to find it. Now while poking around I found basically the same thing that Godin is talking about posted there as well; an entry in the left panel that links back to Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox post, “Diversity is Power for Specialized Sites” (Link).

So if this category speech is a no-brainer and if it’s nothing new for those of us who read these blogs, then why bother?

Then it occurred to me: if you’re enjoying the advantages spelled out by a Zipf distribution, what better way to harness it than post fluffy entries like stuff about nice chocolate packaging and then follow that up with a longish post that includes in the middle “The reason you should care about all this:” in bold letters … and then use the last 1/4 of the post for what amounts to an ad for your own service.

Nothing wrong with that.