It's referral, stupid

I find at times I wake up early in the morning which is when I seem to have these insights. Like I was thinking to myself that the easiest way to completely define Google is to say that it is a referral company. They refer people to interesting content where that you can say is what all media companies do, which is why we, the consumers, allow them to exist.

That is what media companies do, they refer us.

Now Yahoo! is having some troubles so I'm going to help them out with a business idea, as I go to their main website often to see if I'm going to get referred to anything interesting and I do at times and it's always news, nothing else.

But they have so much stuff there that I know they want to refer me, but clearly they want to refer me only to stuff they or their various business partners want. But what about what I want?

I can tell what they want as they are painfully transparent in their needs and I know it's about money and they need money. They need my time so they can make money, I got that part.

But if they can't refer me to what I want then what good are they to me? And why should I help them continue to exist? (Yes, they have search too but Google is a great referrer so I can get more with its search.)

Oh yeah, so the business idea for Yahoo is a personalized page that builds based on your searches (with your permission of course) which kind of acts like a friend, in that, say, you do a lot of porn searches it kind of nicely ignores that (unless you ask it not to) and slowly builds a profile by suggesting at times a site or two but no more than three that you might want to add to your page.

And every once in a while it refers you to some interesting content, which, wow, can include advertising! Where instead of being another beggar on the streets of the Web, Yahoo! can actually be a referrer you appreciate.

I am tired of pushy companies either forcing ads at me--still begging people, no matter how flashy or snazzy the ads are--or never figuring out ways to refer me to interesting content.

While Google keeps doing this better it will clobber everyone else.

Ok, that is my sleepy idea of the day. May as well get up now and later I'll come back to see how this one sounds after the passage of time.

It's referral, stupid. IRS. Hey, that's kind of ironic. Go figure.