The concept drew in part from a February 2003 essay by Clay Shirky, "Power Laws, Weblogs and Inequality", which noted that a relative handful of weblogs have many links going into them but "the long tail" of millions of weblogs may have only a handful of links going into them.
Koncept se djelomično oslanja na esej Claya Shirkya "Power Laws, Weblogs and Inequality" iz veljače 2003., u kojem je uočeno da samo za mali broj blogova ima mnogo poveznica koje vode na te blogove, ali da za "dugi rep" milijuna blogova ima tek nekoliko poveznica koje vode na njih.