There are lots of articles out there about how what you say and do online can impact your job/job search, particularly given that once Google indexes something, it doesn't want to give it up. It's one thing for the 18-22 year-old set to figure this out; it's a whole other ball of wax when it's tech savvy professionals.
Yet, in the past few weeks there have been two massive screw-ups where someone posted something online they shouldn't have. First, advertising exec James Andrews went to Memphis to see Fedex - one of his company's larget clients and twittered the following at the airport:
True confession but I'm in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say, 'I would die if I had to live here.'
One of Fedex's employees found out and it almost/may cost Ketchum their business.
Similarly, the Chairman of the Virginian Repbulicans recently twittered that they'd seized control of the house by convincing a Democrat to switch. Except that they hadn't, and the Democrats figured out who it was and convinced him to stay.
What's fascinating about these blunders is that they've been indexed and are therefore never going to go away. In the past you could just let your errors fade with time, but now they're sucked in by Google and the blogosphere and will follow you around, possible forever.