Bnoopy has an excellent post about how the long tail phenomenon applies to software. He makes the point that there are millions of “custom applications,” but not the kind that people like me make a living building. Rather, these custom applications are built on top of Excel and email. JotSpot (his company) evidently is trying to become a web-enabled platform for these kinds of applications, which would allow it to address “Millions of Markets of Dozens.”
His thesis strikes me as right on. And if he succeeds, he’ll be the next software billionaire. But changing users’ habits is hard, and even Excel struggled in the early days. (Fortunately for them, Lotus fumbled the ball.)
(The timing on this is excellent. I just signed up for a JotSpot beta account yesterday.)