The Long Tail: Long Tail vs. Bottom of Pyramid

The Long Tail: Long Tail vs. Bottom of Pyramid: "Long Tail vs. Bottom of Pyramid
In January I spent a week in India in part to wrap my head around C.K Prahalad's 'Bottom of the Pyramid' theory, which in many ways resembles the Long Tail. Are they in fact the same?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, like the Long Tail, is about finding ways to efficiently address sub-economic markets. In this case, Prahalad is talking about how to sell goods and services to the world's 4 billion poor, for mutual benefit. Diagrammatically, the market he's talking about addressing looks like this:

Is the bottom of the pyramid the Long Tail?
Is it, in other words, just another way to draw this:

The similarities are notable. Both theories are based on the notion that if you break the economic and physical bottlenecks of distribution you can reach a huge, previously neglected market. They both recognize that millions of small sales can, in aggregate, add up to big profits. And they're both focused on ways to lower the cost of providing goods and services so that you can offer them at lower price point while still maintaining margins."