There's no time like a recession to reassert the conventional economic wisdom that making money is harder than those guys on cable pretend. Viral marketing was huge in the mid-90's before the dotcom bubble burst and everyone realized that eyeballs didn't necessarily translate into dollars. It was only a matter of time before the next crop of counterintuitive pop business theorists — from Malcolm Gladwell to James Surowiecki to Chris Anderson — were doused with the cold waters of cash flow. What's so interesting about this latest cycle of backlash and disillusionment, though, is that the assailants are almost all former apostles turned heretics. After the jump, the spats and surprisingly friendly debates about whether the new memes of trendsetting will remain trendy for very long.

A buzzword is no black swan, but when one breaks out of the long tail into the short head and hits the tipping point it still makes me question the wisdom of the crowds. But because the world is flat, I've listed a freakonomical list of the lifespan of a buzzword. Purple cow.

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, blogger, and editor-in-chief of Wired, has a hobby that has confronted him with a dilemma. Anderson builds unmanned aerial vehicles — also known as UAVs or "drones" — and runs a UAV social network on Ning called DIYDrones.com. On that site, he shares his expertise in open-source fashion. Recently, Amir Aalipour, a resident of Tehran, proudly posted photos of his UAV sporting the Iranian flag that he built by following sources like DIYDrones.com. This alarmed and frightened the Wired editor. His knee-jerk reaction was not to seal up the windows with duct tape because a cloud of radioactive dust is going to descend from the jihadist's radio-controlled airplane and kill us all. No, Anderson's knee-jerk reaction was, instead, to worry that others would have that knee-jerk reaction, and put his hobby out of business.

Here's what's happening today in the world of the Long Tail (Wired editor Chris Anderson's niche-marketing theory, recently disputed in the Wall Street Journal):

Speaking of Wired Magazine's Wired/Tired/Expired (née Wired/Tired) feature, it's time for another ripoff of that cultural hot-or-not. Today, let's call this feature "waste it or taste it."

Please enjoy the newly released article from Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, "The rise and fall of the hit," subtitled, "The era of the blockbuster is so over." If Anderson's popular theory of the long tail is true, the "hit" is marginalized, if not dead.

Journos Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher had a grand time hosting the Wall Street Journal's D Conference, or at least they've learned to fake it. Reporter Dan Farber has a write-up at ZDNet, and he kindly lent his event photos. Here they are, misinterpreted.