Careful with what you twit, people will listen.

As a companion to my previous post two more stories about social networking. A happy one and unhappy one.

The Happy One
Next To Normal is a dark and twisted musical about manic depression. Not your everyday topic. With a rock score and a brilliant performance by Alice Ripley it opened Off-Broadway last season and some retooling, opened on Broadway this season (2008-2009) with a discreet success and some Tony nods.

The New York Times, in their Internet section, not their Arts one, presents a great case study of how to use Twitter to promote a show. Instead of simply using the characters voices commenting in current events, the show writer, Brian Yorkey, rewrote the play for the twitter format, managing to enhance the play presenting it in a parallel way.

Congrats to the guys over at Situation Interactive, responsible for the idea!

The Unhappy One
Last week was reported, in something called the TwitterGate (theater types can be very dramatic) of a casting director using twitter during auditions and making comments, mostly nasty comments, about the performers auditioning. Again, personal and private are getting all mixed up here. But obviously in this case, the twitter was being used for business reasons, a promotional tool for the casting agency. But the casting director in question was writing it from a personal perspective. Making some-what-witty comments more appropriated for a sotto-voice between friends.

This article in the New York Times covers the sorry story in detail.

Careful with what you post, Bosses will listen

Posting on FaceBook has become ubiquitous. Everybody has a profile and tries to gather as many “fiends” as possible. And, it’s not only showing off. It’s also broadening our audience.

One of the things I find more interesting about this embracing of the digital social networking, is how lines are blurring between our personal and professional lifes. As an example, when a co-worker married his gay lover, we found about it through the ceremony photos he posted on FaceBook. Or, a friend of mine who works as a social worker at a school and keeps getting invitation from kids at her school to become friends.

So here there is one more victim of all this mess up we like to call social networking. A girl in the UK, pissed off at her boss vented and insulted him, on a FaceBook status update. But, ops, she forgot that they were FaceBook friends, possible digitally befriended him when things were better. In short, he read the post and what is most ironic; fire her on the spot, on FaceBook. I guess you can call that social networking.