If a company doesn't already have a blog to have an informal conversation with users, they probably won't use this. But I love the idea. Anonymity online is powerful, but the persistent presence of individuals and groups hasn't been leveraged well enough.

Dare I use facebook as an example that worked because group identity meant something?

Disqus is a good development along these lines.

The identity of a user on news.yc has done good things for the level of discourse. A user's interest in a YC application or even just reputation havs improved comments and submissions.