Thousands of teevee commercials from the 1950s through the 1980s. More than 7,000 U.S. and Canadian print ads in a variety of categories. Tens of thousands of documentary photographs. More than 3,000 pieces of American sheet music published between 1850 and 1920. And the proverbial much, much more. It’s all there in the Duke Digital Collections.

You’ve heard the phrase “the long tail.” It was popularized by Chris Anderson in his 2006 book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.

Anderson’s 2009 book, Free: The Past and Future of a Radical Price, was recognized as one of the best business books of the year by a variety of notable entities, including Financial Times, MediaTrust and Strategy + Business.

Appropriately, you can get the book for free, and have been able to since summer over on Wired. Download the zipped MP3 files, load them onto your iPod and enjoy.

Back on Christmas Eve, I told you about Seppukoo, a site that helps you commit virtual identity suicide. Facebook sent them a cease and desist letter, but they’re still here and doing the digital Kevorkian thing.

Meanwhile, suicidemachine.org is another site designed to help you eliminate your virtual self so you can spend more time with your actual self.

Snarky nature of these sites aside, I suspect there’s something bigger at play here: The clouds of a social media backlash may be gathering on the horizon. I first noted them back in September 2007, when kids at the Ypulse Tween Mashup conference were talking about the next big thing in social media being the unplugging from social media to focus on their actual lives.

That Facebook may be heading into court over Seppukoo is telling, too: Clearly they see the site more as a serious threat than a casual diversion.

Takeaway for marketers: Now, more than ever, as you operate in the world of Web 2.0 (I wish that buzzword itself would commit suicide!) you need to be focusing on providing value, not simply having a presence.

JANUARY 6 UPDATE: Facebook kills Suicide Machine.

“Twenty-ten” or “two-thousand-ten”? There’s no clear consensus. Don’t worry, though:  The Seattle Times reports that the National Association of Good Grammar is on the case.

It’s a good weekend for catching up on email, backing up your data and thinking about your business. If you’re interested in what marketers are thinking 2010 will bring, I posted a whole slew of predictions this morning over on the BuxMont digital blog.