Is Long Tail Obsolete?

A research from HP Labs suggests that Long Tail might not be true anymore. On the 2.0 "social" sites, in this case Digg and YouTube, the popular content dominates.

The question is, if that hypothesis is true:

• How does the "social factor" render the long tail effect obsolete?
• Does it mean the virtual "word of mouth" (e.g. Digg count or YouTube viewer number) has much more influence than random Google query?
• Do we need to care about SEO anymore or practice on Digging technique instead?

I have no answer at all, at the moment.

One more thing. From Ars Technica:

the study suggests that popularity on these sites is a self-reinforcing process. For Digg, the dynamics are extremely rapid. By 24 hours after a popular story is submitted, the number of votes it attracts can be used to predict the votes it has at 30 days with high accuracy.

This paragraph reminds me about Chaos Theory. Are they related?