Happy birthday, Quick'n'Dirty! Our podcast baby is growing up

Like a proud parent, I awoke a bit teary-eyed this morning when I realized that today, Aaron Strout and I would celebrate the first birthday of our Quick'n'Dirty podcast. Born one year ago after a dinner chat-turned-debate sparked the idea for an ongoing show, the Quick'n'Dirty podcast has been a source of joy for both me and Aaron over the course of the last year. We've had some amazing guests -- which you can find listed in wrap-ups both on this blog and over in Aaron's world -- and some really fun conversations. We've even grown so big that we now need a babysitter, er, producer, and found one in the way of social media master Rich Harris. It's been a tremendous year. To celebrate, we brought on a very special guest -- Mark Milian, technology reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

During the show we both weighed in on what some of our favorite moments were during our last 12 months together. We each picked a favorite social application. Aaron's favorite is Foursquare. He just loves the usability and the way that the service has grown over the last year. He laments that he is disappointed that neither Dennis Crowley or Naveen Selvadurai have been on the show yet, but I took the blame since I've written about my previous love affair -- and then brutal falling out -- with Foursquare many times.

My favorite social network is Pandora. How can anyone not love Pandora for internet radio? I listen to it at home, I listen to it in the car, I listen to it at work. I even have an "I <3 Pandora" t-shirt that I proudly wear often. I've even helped Pandora lobby in the past when it was facing certain doom. Call me a fan girl, but I love this service and am really proud of TIME 100 super-man Tim Westergren for all that he has accomplished with this business.

We then moved onto our favorite featured Twitterers. We've published a whole list of them here, but we were forced to narrow down to each of our favorites. This was a difficult task because no one becomes a featured Twitterer unless either Aaron or I or both of us find them to be compelling. Aaron's pick was Deb Robison aka @debindenver, who has been a most loyal listener and chat room participant during our live show. She's also quite savvy about all things business, and is a consistently great read. My pick was Tom Eston aka @agent0x0, a security industry veteran who has taken his wealth of knowledge to create SocialMediaSecurity.com. This site is great for both tech-savvy folks and even the technology novice, all who need to learn about different ways to secure themselves while using social networks.

After we took our first walk down memory lane, we welcomed our special guest, Mark Milian. Not only is Mark a technology writer for the Los Angeles Times, but he's also  been instrumental in helping to build out the social media strategy for LATimes.com. He said many interesting things about this, such as the site having more than 100 Twitter accounts and how the new external Facebook "like" function has proven to be a significant traffic driver. We also talked a little bit about the blogger versus journalist debate, as well as whether or not blogs will survive as a platform. Mark had some riveting things to say on this topic, so be sure to listen to the replay for his great comments.

We continued our walk down memory lane with a quick and dirty visit to the original debate topic from one year ago -- what impact will celebrities have on Twitter? Aaron's original position was that it would be a good thing; mine was that it would change the intimacy level of Twitter and turn it more into a utility. You'll need to listen to the replay to find out where we stand a year later.

Reminder: No show next week but we'll be back in full effect on June 17. Thanks for celebrating our birthday with us.