At last night’s mediabistro.com “Social Media and the Customer: Focus on Community Management” panel, former BusinessWeek community editor Shirley Brady revealed that she and veteran reporter Steve Baker had “set up a private Ning network to keep people in the loop” while the magazine was in the midst of being sold by its owner McGraw-Hill, according to our sister blog PRNewser.

Both Brady and Baker were among the 130 people let go from BusinessWeek after Bloomberg LP acquired the pub in October. But the network they set up remains, and ex-staffers now use it stay in touch.

Baker told PRNewser that the group now has several hundred members, mostly made up of BusinessWeek alums.

Read more: BusinessWeek Staffers Used Ning To Communicate During Acquisition –PRNewser

Previously: More On This Week’s BusinessWeek Layoffs, Departing BusinessWeek Tweets

To say it’s been a rough week for BusinessWeek would be an understatement. Yesterday, the axe fell hard, and new parent Bloomberg LP has cut around 130 people for the business mag’s staff — including 60 to 70 from the edit side.

Among those getting pink slips were big names like media columnist Jon Fine, community manager Shirley Brady and tech writers Steve Wildstrom and Stephen Baker.

Business journalism blog Talking Biz News has kept a running tally of outgoing BusinessWeekers since yesterday, and today has an updated list. Blogger Chris Roush says senior writer Pete Engardio, Atlanta bureau chief Dean Foust, Philadelphia bureau chief Amy Barrett, management department editor Jena McGregor, associate editor Hardy Green, senior editor James Cooper, senior photo editor Kathy Moore and Prudence Crowther, head of the copy desk, will not be making the transition to Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek.

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News of this week’s layoffs at BusinessWeek is starting to trickle on to Twitter.

Looks like technology editor Steve Wildstrom and innovation and design writer Damian Joseph are among laid off by new owner Bloomberg LP. Good luck guys!

We’ll keep updating with Twitter news, but if you know of anyone else who got dumped by BusinessWeek (as Joseph says), drop us a line

Update: More tweets after the jump

Earlier: Bloomberg Looks To Cut BusinessWeek Staffers

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From left: NPR’s Andy Carvin juggles devices for Twittering from the stage last night while addressing social media for journalists with fellow panelists Shirley Brady of BusinessWeek.com, PressThink’s Jay Rosen, and Rachel Sklar of Abrams Research and The Daily Beast.

Armed with Blackberries, cameras, and computers, the Twitterati and those seeking to break in flocked to last night’s Journalism and Social Media Panel at Tribeca Cinemas. Media types in the audience at the mediabistro.com-hosted event listened to journalists discuss that 140-character wonder of new media, Twitter. An informal audience poll showed that most were familiar with the microblogging platform, while nearly half were registered on the site. The event’s golden child remained at the heart of the conversation as panelists explored its current uses and its future practices. “Twitter is really the conversation that never ends,” said Andy Carvin (@acarvin)of NPR, who like fellow panelist Rachel Sklar (@rachelsklar) of Abrams Research and The Daily Beast, even managed to Twitter from the stage while discussing the medium.

The conversation kicked off with PressThink’s Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) citing Marx’s definition of revolution in reference to social media: “The means of production have changed hands in publication… It’s an open source revolution,” he said. Continuing the metaphor, Sklar quipped, “Sometimes revolutions swing a little too far,” and the panel concurred, citing mob mentality and a lack of respect for production as some social media trouble spots.

Echoing the question reverberating around conference tables across the country, the evening’s big x-factor was how to monetize the social media mechanism to bring in cash. Originally directed at Rosen, the question engendered a delayed response. His silence made people brace themselves for his answer. “Well, this is the question people ask,” he joked, to uncomfortable audience laughter. Collectively, the panel agreed that it envisioned more possibilities than disappointments in a new world of news fueled by social media.

More social media insights and video from the event, after the jump…

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