The other day I wrote about a mom who had taken to the blogosphere to find a kidney for her daughter. The Domestic Diva updated her blog today — and they found a donor match! The outpouring of support overwhelmed the system. I just wrote about the terrorist attacks in Mumbia and how global connectivity has changed how we get news. It also changes how we reach out to other people. On her blog, the Domestic Diva wrote that “no one is a stranger, but just friends we haven’t met yet.” A few people heard about her situation and blogged about it, tweeted it, posted it out their MySpace and Facebook pages — and suddenly massive amounts of people were lining up ready to donate a kidney to help this family.

Hooray for the Thanksgiving Miracle and hooray for the kind human spirits!!

So, how did I learn about the terrorist attack in India? Not on television … and certainly not from a newspaper. Not even from a blog. I first heard about it on Twitter — and, boy, did word spread like wildfire.

You may not use Twitter — and that’s ok. But, please take a minute to click on this link to read how people communicated the sheer terror in 140 characters or less. The link will take you to the stream of dialogue with updates about the attack. Many of the upates are firsthand accounts of the attacks. Thanks to Twitter, we can see unfiltered raw emotion …  fear … bewilderment. We don’t have to rely on a news anchor or reporter to tell us their interpretation of events. We can see for ourselves exactly what people are experiencing. Thanks to technology, we are so connected that we are able to “watch” a terrorist attack via tweets.

In the less than five minutes it took me to write this post, 72 more “tweets” have been sent out about Mumbai. Talk about global connectivity. Seriously, check out the link. You won’t read anything like it from the traditional media.

Have you heard about the “Motrin Mommies” controversy? They posted an ad on Saturday, causing such an uproar among Tweeters and bloggers that the ad was taken down by Sunday and the company issued a  bland apology.

The company I work for just started a blog and I happen to be doing the blogging. Every once in a while, I will repost something on this site in case you want to read it — and saving me from having to write about the same topic twice.

In case you missed it, here’s the ad (Motrin took it down, but you gotta love the permanency of YouTube!):

From a marketing and PR perspective, there are some important lessons to learn from this whole debacle. Namely that we’re not living in a 9-5, Monday-Friday world anymore. People are blogging on the weekends, so comapnies need to be listening. Communicators are never really “off the clock.” Click here to read other lessons I took from this.

If you want to see the discussion on Twitter, check this out. It’s amazing how much buzz was generated in such a short period of time!

It’s becoming harder and harder to find actual experts. You know, people who base their “facts” on the truth … people who really know what they’re talking about (not just those who talk a good game).

There are countless examples of political talking heads who claim to be exprts who maybe weren’t so right after all. (Just think of all the pundits who thought Sarah Palin would help John McCain on Election Day.) I imagine by now, everyone is a little tired of politics. So, let’s look at this issue from a different standpoint. There are two examples that come to mind.

This weekend, the American Advertising Federation is holding its midyear retreat — and, as has become common practice at these kinds of events, it’s being twittered. In fact, the Ad2 Orlando chapter is twittering. I follow them on Twiter, so I can keep up on what is being said at this event. It turns out that one of the speakers at the conference is the chief creative officer at WonderGroup — an advertising agency that specializes in the buying-decision relationship between moms and kids. The speaker is apparently a so-called social media expert (even though he only has 43 followers on Twitter. To give some perspective, I have 52 and I don’t try to claim to be an expert at this stuff. My husband, who owns a social media marketing company, and really knows how to do this, has more than 400 followers. Chris Brogan, a real social media guru, has almost 20,000 followers.) Update: The speaker wasn’t positioned as a social media expert. He focused on how social media is changing the game. Sorry for the confusion — hard to tell what’s going on 1000 miles away in just 140 characters.

Anyway, this speaker was saying things that just aren’t true many people believe aren’t true about social media (like that people want brands to be their friends. Huh??) But, all these conference attendees think he’s an expert — therefore believing every word that comes out of his mouth (even though it clearly doesn’t make sense). Who proclaimed him an expert? Update: As a speaker he is perceived as an authority, so people are inclined to believe what he says, even if he offered a disclaimer about his social media expertise. Again, not there … can’t say for sure.

The notion of social media marketing is new — and there really are very few experts. Peter Shankman is probably as close as they come. Other people may have had some good results, but they’re hardly experts. It’s too new of a concept to have thousads of experts. Even though PR isn’t new, the concept of everyone being an expert is similar. Everyone claims to be PR experts, but there aren’t that many people who do it really, really well. Just about anyone can get a clip, but it’s much harder to actually shape perception (the real point of PR, for those of you who still aren’t sure what it is that I actually do for a living!)

Another real-world example: The domestic violence support group that I co-facilitate is led by a minister. She’s a very, very religious person and incorporates faith into the group discussions. One day, we somehow got on the topic of homosexual relationships. And, without even thinking twice, she said it’s a terrible sin … an abomination of God. This woman is an authoritative figure for a group of very vulnerable women. They see her as an expert. Wouldn’t it make more sense to couch her beliefs by saying it’s a sin in her opinion? Some religions are opposed to gay marriage … but there are plenty of theologins who argue for gay rights. Who’s the expert there? So much of religion is based on interpretation of the Bible. But, as a very smart preacher said, it’s important to remember that the Bible is also a set of interpretations. For example, the four apostles wrote their interpretation of events and what Jesus said. What if they interpreted something wrong?

I guess the lesson is that we all need to be careful about who we deem to be experts. Especially with the information superhighway, anyone can set up a blog and seem like an authority on some topic. But, be warned. Don’t trust everything you hear or read. Do your research before determining who to believe and who to take with a grain of salt.

I’m volunteering for the local Orange County Democrats — helping mainly with events and PR. Thus far, it’s been a good experience. There’s so much going on with the Obama events and all the local candidates — it’s a whirlwind.

One thing I’d like to do is find ways to help the party capitalize on the interest of people in their 20s and 30s. Without question, Obama has brought a new sense of excitement — and we, at the local level, need to make sure that these new Democrats stay engaged in the process.

So, I had an idea: We need to Twitter. If you’re interested in following what’s going on with the Orange County Dems, check out www.twitter.com/orangedems.

Not familiar with Twitter? The easiest way to explain it is a a melding of IMing and status updates. As a NY Times blogger put it, it’s a combination of talk radio, digg and late-night television.

Like talk radio, you get an unvarnished and largely real-time window into what a wide swath of people are actually talking about.

Like Digg, you see people point to the articles and videos that they want to share.

And like late-night TV (or a politician’s sound bite for the evening news), there is a premium on pithy one-liners that try to get to the heart of the matter.

However one defines Twittering, it’s clearly a communication vehicle gaining in popularity — and one that can produce significant results. Just ask www.30lines.com …