Solis, Needleman make a visit to the Quick'n'Dirty

Last week's Quick'n'Dirty podcast took a much different spin. For one reason, my usual partner in crime Aaron Strout was off globetrotting. And, for another reason, with my guest co-host came a slightly different format. That guest host was none other than Brian Solis, friend and author of the long-awaited "Engage", who was kind enough to step into Aaron's shoes for the day.

Our special guest was Rafe Needleman, editor of CNET Webware and author of ""="">, an entertaining yet educational must-read book for public relations professionals.

Since I had the opportunity to pick two very big brains on this show (no offense to Aaron, of course), we changed up the format a little. Rather than highlighting a social network, Brian and I instead talked about "social networking fatigue," which is the idea that many early adopters pressure themselves to be everywhere all of the time, giving themselves very little balance or potential for clear perspective due to the race to be first for everything. We also talked about the challenge of simplifying social media for the novice user. We brought Rafe into the tail end of the conversation, which spun briefly into talk about the newly released and somewhat controversial Google Buzz.

Amid our chatter about Google's errors in trying to make the social network simple -- and thereby somewhat unusable -- Rafe came through with a great comparison to Facebook. "Facebook is not simple," he said. "It's tuned." Meaning, the advantage that Facebook has over Google is its ability and willingness to listen to feedback from its users to fine-tune the experience to their requests (note: this podcast was recorded before Google announced updates to Buzz based on user feedback). Give the replay a listen to hear more about this, as well as Rafe's take on the current media landscape and cost structure, and a bit more about his book.

Finally, while we didn't have an official "featured Twitterer" this week, Brian and I decided to give a little shout-out love to Ken Yeung (@thekenyeung) and Krystyl Baldwin (@krystyl) for their positive and unwavering support of the Bay Area social media community.

Listen to the replay for more, or find us on iTunes by searching "QuicknDirty." We can be found on Twitter over at @quickndirty.

With Aaron still gallivanting around the globe, this week's guest co-host will be Greg Matthews of Humana. We'll interview Susan Scrupski, founder and CEO of The 2.0 Adoption Council. Join us at 3 p.m. PT / 6 p.m. ET on Thursday.