The exact date isn’t finalized just yet, but the general manager of Lycos has committed to appear on Rainmaker, the Internet radio program premiering later this month at SearchEngineMatrix.com, the first such adult radio appearance for a Lycos representative, mastermind and host Daron Babin has told AVN.com.
Babin said he called that general manager, Tom Wilde, September 2, to discuss the current state of the adult Internet including a number of Lycos's "more aggressive" moves, like removing a few adult-oriented outlets and keywords from their search engine.
"I just kind of talked about the general state of what's going on with the mergers and acquisitions, the major portals," said Babin, also known as SEGuru. "I basically invited (Lycos) to come onto Rainmaker, introduce them to what Rainmaker was all about. And he knew I used to be with IGallery, and I basically made it plain that this was an adult-oriented audience, a Webmaster audience, other high visibility Webmasters.
"And he was very plain about it, too," Babin continued. "He was like, hey, those guys are some of the best in the business, and he'd love to be a guest on the show. And it's the first time Lycos has agreed to come and talk to adult Webmasters."
Babin said the actual date for Wilde's appearance would be announced as soon as it was confirmed.
Babin isn't exactly in virgin territory when it comes to hosting mainstream search engine people on adult radio. It was he who hosted the first mainstream search engine's appearance on an adult Webcast, when his old radio show, SEGuru Search Engine Spotlight, featured a representative from Google.
"Back in the day when Infoseek and a lot of those were around , Excite was still alive, we beat the hell out of them as a community," he said. "We just beat the hell out of those search engines. But I was teaching, way back when, don't do that stuff, you can work within the parameters of being search engine friendly, make the engine happy, and still get the great rankings. You didn't have to go to war with those guys."
Babin thinks it's that message, one he continues to share, that made first Google and now Lycos feel comfortable about letting their representatives guest on an adult Webcast. "I didn't realize it, but back then the engines were also watching us discuss them," he said. "So they knew my stance and my position, and the more I began to talk to them, the more they began to take my calls, and I began to cultivate a relationship with them."
