Christmas is a time for giving, and I always feel that the TV gives me a lot of value over the holiday.

Generally my TV viewing boils down to camp daytime TV shows (Cash in the Attic), repeats of Columbo and MSW, but occasionally I'll watch a film.

This year, Monsters Inc got me thinking about the Long Tail. (I've seen the film before - quite liked it, but started to get annoyed with the 'realistic fur effects' on Sully (the blue bear-like creature) which turns some bits of the film into a show reel for the animation studio...).

In the film, some of the monsters work for the Child Detection Agency (CDA) and their job is to look out for human contamination in the monster land scare factory thing.

The thing about monsters is that they're all different, so when the CDA hand out the necessary uniforms (see the picture) then every uniform has to be individually tailored for the wearer, even though they're a commodity item (presumably).

So as the Net-Generation embrace the Long Tail and move away from being a standard fit, then they gradually become little monsters, who want the same stuff, but in a way that works for them - personalisation, process, whatever.

While Amazon (for instance) grabs the immediate opportunity of selling the Long Tail, then social networking grabs the consequential opportunity: the expectation of tailored experiences - connections, data, visualisation.

What's next then? Personalised commodity items?