Ever since the Cluetrain Manifesto set out new ground rules for corporate relations with their customers, Tom Johnson has been watching the results play out in the public spaces of corporate websites. Since the publication of Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Ways Businesses Talk with Customers, which advocates that organizations should strip away the layers of marketing-speak that consumers find irritating and phony, and lay their feelings bare between themselves and their customers, Tom has been waiting for companies to peel down and get some full frontal conversations going.

Tom does his own rounds—a type of organizational voyeurism through the blogosphere where he looks for honest conversations between corporate America and their constituencies. He points out the various types of blogging personalities that he’s come across so far.

First, there’s the pseudo-nude; that’s the product manager claiming to have a naked conversation, but in reality, they’re wearing a flesh-colored body stocking of sales chat that covers them from neck to knees. They also rarely respond to questions in blog comments because their blog is actually a pseudo-conversation meant to push out product information.

Then, there’s the streaker; that’s the blogger who talks about everything and anything in three-sentence posts. They produce a lot of posts about nothing in particular, so you see their naked conversations for about three seconds at a time, and then they’re gone. They’re entertaining, but don’t necessarily add a lot of value.

Finally, there’s the naturalist; they’re not only “naked conversationalists,” they own the campground! That’s the blogger who would connect to you in person the same way they connect on their blog: with sincerity and integrity. The idea of being honest and open isn’t frightening, and the idea of being human, with all our foibles, is refreshing. There is a certain thoughtful elegance to that stance, a kind of Michelangelo’s David - and of course, that’s a sculpture that would never have worked had David been wearing a suit.