Shel Israel has a genuine concern about the lack of credibility of the Masked Blogger.

"Masked, until you show yourself, you will lack credibility.  Just look at the comments you are receiving.  Until you show yourself, you will make finding you a game."

Hopefully my last post helped explain more about where I'm coming from. You can read it here:

Shel also offers to help answer the core questions I have about the value of "joining the conversation" and how this relates to larger businesses. These can be summarized into three main questions:

- how do corporations control the message if they let their staff blog?
- is there real value in getting involved in blogging, for a corporation and for the customer?
- is transparency and openness a risk or opportunity for businesses?

A good (but short) case study for these questions is what has happened around this blog in the last 48-hours. Is Apple getting any useful and actionable information from the resulting conversations? Do they better understand what its customers are thinking? What about Apple customers? Does participation and the value of the shared insights only matter if they are acted on? How sustainable will this be?

Shel has also given me the opportunity to verify my identity while keeping the protection afforded by anonymity:

"Masked, I'd be happy to give you greater detail, but we would have to go offline. I pledge Here and now in front of all these people that I will not reveal your identity, but I'll be very happy to answer any ten of your challenging questions, if you will answer ten of mine, letting me publish them on this blog, while keeping your name private."

Shel, drop me a note at blogger.masked@gmail.com

PS: Your book Naked Conversations arrived from Amazon an hour ago. Thank you for the recommendation. Looking forward to reading it.