The business news cycle used to be fairly standard and defined. Make a decision, inform management, tell the employees, and release an announcement to the press. Today's rapid technology shift makes this cycle obsolete.

In some cases, employees are reading about layoffs and downsizing online before their bosses even know about it. While the tech-centric areas of Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley are the first to see employers actively blogging and Twittering news, it is only a matter of time before companies of all sizes and in all industries will be compelled to blog about it before it becomes common knowledge.

Companies may feel pressure to break bad news on their own blogs so that they can better control the message.

"Today, whatever you say inside of a company will end up on a blog," according to Rusty Rueff, a former human resources executive at Electronic Arts and PepsiCo. "So you have a choice as a company - you can either be proactive and take the offensive and say, 'Here's what's going on,' or you can let someone else write the story for you."

Ignoring the current speed of the news cycle can be dangerous. It is never a good thing to have employees asking managers about layoffs and not getting answers, when they are reading about it online.

After Jive Software cut 20 percent of its staff, one of the terminated employees, Chris Kalani, called it an "all out massacre" on his personal blog and said he had been forced to leave behind his things, including his wedding photo. Tech blogs immediately picked up the story. Jive was left to try and recover, sparking a communications crisis and many apologies.

Even start-ups have to act more like public companies, with transparency a key communications driver. By becoming more proactive, companies are more likely to retain their top caliber people and remain human to those they have to let go.