Confusing the Long Tail and the Technology Adoption Lifecycle

Scoble, my friend, I think you have confused two curves.  You don't get a long tail by taking the technology adoption lifecycle (a diffusion of technology adoption segmented by standard deviations from innovators to early adopters to chasm to early majority to late majority to laggards over time), by folding it in half and paying attention to the skinny leftover pigtail.  One is the diffusion of a technology product by psychodemographic profile, one a diffusion of products by volume.

Microsoft, Apple and Google focused on innovators first.  Google makes money through the long tail by arbitraging network economics.  Microsoft doesn't grok wikis, no comment.  Apple is still for innovators, that's why we pay them more.  The Tablet PC will never be for the long tail, its for the 20%, but it hasn't crossed the chasm. 

Once you grasp the long tail, you discover markets and users that didn't exist because search and transaction costs were too high.  All those things people thought you couldn't make money from, but, suprise, they are, like social software...that's the long tail.